


You’re So Cool

by KittyleFay



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Bisexual Steve Harrington, Fake/Pretend Relationship, Falling In Love, First Kiss, First Time, Gay Billy Hargrove, Gay Sex, High School, Homophobic Language, M/M, Period-Typical Homophobia, Popularity
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-13
Updated: 2020-04-28
Packaged: 2020-06-27 16:09:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 37,285
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19794361
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KittyleFay/pseuds/KittyleFay
Summary: There is a rumour going around Hawkins High that Billy Hargrove, the popular new kid, is gay. No one knows for sure if the rumours are true, so in order to find out and earn back his own popularity, Steve Harrington agrees to seduce him until he cracks.Only Steve may or may not be a little bit gay himself





	1. The Rumour

I hated Billy Hargrove. From the moment I met him, I knew that I hated him and not just for his mullet, his earring, or his leather jacket. Hell, I couldn’t even have cared less of that $1000 compensation called a Camaro. There was just something about him that got under my skin, like a flesh-eating virus. For the longest time, I couldn’t put my finger on it, though the fact that he stole my crown might have had something to do with it.

I was the king of Hawkins High before that asshole came into the picture. King Steve. That was what they called me. My parents may have played a part in it, not just because they were rich and owned a fancy house with a heated pool, but because they were always away. At first, I passed the time by drinking what I could of my mom’s stash, which I think is what brought me to champion the keg stand by the time I was sixteen. Give me an empty house that kids can drink, smoke, and fuck in on the weekends and the crown was mine.

Until Billy Hargrove came along.

He’d come all the way from sunny California to sleepy Hawkins and immediately became our school’s favourite shiny new toy. From the moment he stepped out of his car, he was already turning heads. I won’t lie, the guy was good-looking, so I don’t blame anyone for watching the way those skin-tight jeans cupped his ass or the way his tongue flickered between his teeth. Even I did, at some point. Christ, the guy looked like a rock star. Then the bastard had to beat my keg score and that was it. King Steve was dead. Long live King Billy.

Until the rumour started. 

No one really knew how the rumour began or who started it. I sure as hell didn’t. Some said that it was passed on from some of his old friends back in Cali. Others said it came from a guy he got a little too high with by the quarry. A few said it came from a girl he went out with who was bitter that he couldn’t get it up. Wherever it came from, no one would shut up about it.

“Billy Hargrove is a fag!”

“Is it true?” asked several people, to which several other people said without a doubt in their minds: “yes.”

“I heard he earned the money for his car by fucking other dudes.”

“I heard he had a threesome with a drag queen and a bear.”

“I heard he caught the gay plague from a tranny.”

I heard it all. There was no escaping the endless barrage of wagging tongues. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t getting sick of hearing about the guy and whatever he was doing with other guys. I didn’t even see what the big fuss was. If the guy liked other guys, so what? Then again, it was probably the most interesting anyone would hear in a hick town like Hawkins.

“Did you hear…?”

“Yes,” I said one Monday. “Yes, Tommy, I’ve heard all about Billy Hargrove being a fruit. Now kindly get your ass off my locker.”

Tommy Hagan grimaced as he shuffled over, still holding his girlfriend, Carol Perkins. The two may well have been joined at the hip. I’d known them since kindergarden and never saw them apart. Everyone said they’d been fucking ever since middle school and they neither confirmed nor denied it. All I knew was that if I had a penny for every time I’d had to wash my parents’ bedsheets because of them, I’d be richer than I already was.

“Do you think he really is, though?” Carol asked, twirling fire red curl around her finger. “I mean, he doesn’t _look_ gay.”

 _How does someone_ look _gay?_ I wondered. _Is there a special badge for it?_

“Oh, come on!” Tommy said, pointing to the way Billy strutted down the hallway. “No normal dude has hair that great and who wears jeans that tight if they’re _not_ begging to get fucked up the ass?”

I had to laugh. “Hargrove may not be gay, Tommy, but I’m beginning to think you night be.”

That earned me a good slap upside the head.

“Do you really think he’s got the gay plague?” Carol continued to question, starting to look scared. “I hope not. I’ve got Science class with the guy, and Math, and Geography. Oh, God! You don’t think I have it too, do you?”

“He actually attends class?” I questioned, but was ignored.

“I dunno,” Tommy shrugged. “I mean, he _is_ from California. That place is full of fags, dykes, cross-dressers and all sorts of shit.”

“How do _you_ know?”

“Duh! Remember when my folks and I went on vacation there a couple of years ago? They were everywhere! I swear, a drag queen tried to offer me a blowjob for fifty bucks.”

I groaned. Tommy never missed an oportunity to tell that old story, though I could never help but notice that he’d change the details every time, which always made me wonder.

“I just wish we knew for sure.” Carol said with a sigh. Tommy wrapped an arm around her waist and kissed her neck. That was my cue to leave.

“And I wish to pass this next English test,” I said, clearing my throat and gathering what I could of my mountain of homework. “I also wish I were king of the world, but you can’t win ‘em all. Anyway, I’m late for class.”

That was only partially true. I was running late, but mostly I just wanted to get away from Tommy and Carol, so they could catch herpes somewhere else. I probably shouldn’t have told them that I’d see them at lunch.

I was fifteen minutes late for English and was half-tempted to greet Nancy with a kiss on the cheek, but reminded myself that was Jonathan’s job now. At least there was a seat next to an alternative girl named Robin, who I barely knew and didn’t look all too happy to see me. 

“That’s not your seat,” she murmured. “It’s Tammy’s.”

“But she isn’t here, is she?”

Robin stared darkly at me and looked as if she was ready to start a fight with me until Billy Hargrove marched into the room. 

“Mr. Hargrove,” Mrs. Byers chimed with a sardonic smile. “I hope you and Mr. Harrington have a good reason for being this late.”

“Sorry, ma’am, we were too busy living our best lives. Isn’t that right, Harrington?”

Billy wriggled his tongue between his teeth like a serpent and shot a cheeky wink at my direction. I didn’t know why my cheeks suddenly went so hot.

* * *

“I’ve been thinking.”

“That’s new,” I said, which earned me another slap upside the head, this time from Carol. Lord forbid I say something against her precious boyfriend.

“As I was saying,” Tommy growled through his teeth. “I’ve been thinking: what if somebody found out _for sure_ that Hargrove was a faggot?”

Carol practically cackled. “Can you imagine? He’d go from king of the castle to dirty rascal like that!” She snapped her fingers.

 _King of the castle to dirty rascal._ I had to admit, I liked the sound of that. 

“I don’t know about that,” Tommy continued. “But if people knew, they’d probably steer clear of him if he _does_ have that gay plague. We’d be doing the school a service.”

I furrowed my brow. “We?”

That’s when Tommy got that look in his eye. I always hated that look; that stupid smirk with a tiny twinkle in his beady black eyes. Last time I saw that look, he came up with the brilliant idea that we drink a whole bottle of tequila within ten minutes. I since had a strong aversion to the drink.

“No one _really_ knows if Hargrove likes dick,” he explained. “But they _would_ if they caught him in the act.”

I shrugged. “So, we just have to catch him with another dude? Sure, sounds easy. Just stalk the guy until we catch him with his pants down. Got any binoculars?”

“No, dumbass, I’m thinking: what if someone were to get on his good side? You know, bait him, lure him in, get him hooked until he cracks.”

“So, you’re saying somebody should seduce him?”

“Well, not just anybody.”

I looked around. On my left, I saw Billy sitting on a nearby bench reading a book. On my right, I saw Nancy and Jonathan eating lunch together. When I looked back, Tommy was giving me _that_ look. That’s when it hit me.

“Oh, no! No, no, no, and no! Not happening!”

“C’mon, Harrington! I’ve seen the way the guy looks at you in the changing rooms after P.E. You’re probably his type.”

I thought I was going to be sick. “Okay, yuck! _Really_ didn’t want that mental image. Also, why don’t _you_ do it, if you’re so obsessed with him?

“One: not obsessed. Two: duh! Because I have a girlfriend. No way is he gonna go anywhere near someone who likes pussy, but you? How long as it been since you’ve even kissed a girl?”

 _Thanks for the reminder, asshole._ “What’s your point?”

“My point is that he’ll want someone who’s single and ready to mingle. He’s gonna want a gay who wants him.”

“But I _don’t_ want him!”

“No, but you want your crown back, don’t you?”

I bit my tongue. Tommy was looking at me with that smug grin on his stupid face while Carol only watched with wide eyes and I half-expected her to start munching on popcorn. It took all my strength to keep from slapping them both silly. Instead, I grabbed my backpack and stood from my seat. “Fuck you, Tommy.”

As I marched away, I could see Billy Hargrove watching me at the corner of my eye. I avoided his gaze, but couldn’t help but notice the title of the book he was reading: _Cyrano de Bergerac._

* * *

I’d like to say that that was that, but I wouldn’t be telling this story if it were. The truth was, the thought kept running through my head for the rest of the afternoon. What if I _did_ get close to Billy Hargrove? What would become of it? Would he give me back my crown? Would I take it from his bare hands? Would he show me how to earn another? Would I hate it as much as I thought I did? 

Of course, how could I pay any attention to History when all these questions and more seem to burst in my head like fireworks. I mean, who even was the umpteenth secretary of state? Madonna? I dunno, who the hell knew that shit? 

I excused myself to use the bathroom and regretted it as soon as I opened the door.

Billy Hargrove had a cigarette in one hand and another boy’s hand in the other. I didn’t know the other boy, but I’d seen him around. He was someone that I recognized from the school basketball team who had a BMI bigger than his IQ. I noticed him stuffing something into his backpack. At the time, I couldn’t quite tell what it was, but I could tell what was in both their hands. It was money. $50, to be exact. My stomach turned. It made me want to throw up thinking about what I may have just missed between them. 

The jock passed by me as if I were invisible. He may well have walked through me and never noticed. Billy noticed me, though. Boy, did he notice me. 

“Nice timing, Harrington,” he said. “You just missed quite a show.”

 _Good_ , I wanted to say, but saw no point in starting any kind of argument with him. I couldn’t help but watch as the punk casually took a drag of his cigarette as if nothing had happened. That was the funny thing about Billy. What always baffled me was how few fucks he seemed to give about the rumours that surrounded him. Anyone on the school grounds he found gossiping or straight up called him a faggot to his face, he’d flip off without shame and move on. I don’t think that fact _really_ sunk in until that afternoon.

I tried to shrug him off, unzipping my jeans and hoping to God that the walls of the urinal blocked his view. I tried to look for some other distraction, as I felt his eyes on me, but soon found one right in front of me. 

_Billy Hardgroves a cooksukker!_

The writing looked like chicken scratches in what looked to be ball point pen. I stared and stared, feeling as if it was staring back at me until I felt Billy looming behind me.

“S’real poetry, ain’t it?” he said, his tongue flickering between his teeth. “Sorta stuff only Shelley could compete with.”

“Shelly Valentine? From the cheerleading squad?”

Billy rolled his eyes. _“Percy_ Shelley.” _Who?_

No sooner had he said this did he take a red permanent marker from his pocket, pop off the lid, and begin to write over the graffiti. I would have squirmed away from him, but I felt like that would mean showing weakness against him. All I could do was let his half-bare chest press against my shoulder, his muscles move against me, and his cologne invade my senses. 

I only assumed that the bandage on his wrist came from a fight with some kid at school. 

Though relieved when he was finished, I couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw what he’d written.

_Billy Har_ ~~_d_ ~~ _grove’s a_ ~~_cooksukker_ ~~ _cocksucker!_

His smile was a wicked one, as he snuffed out the remains of his cigarette just below the exclamation point. Before he could make his way out the door, I had to ask: “Are you?”

I don’t know why I said it and I don’t know why he was looking at me like I’d just challenged him to a boxing match. 

“Are you?” I asked again. “Gay, I mean.”

“What do you think?”

I didn’t have an answer for that. I didn’t know what to think. Billy laughed and left.

That was when I made up my mind. Zipping up my jeans and washing my hands, I sprinted my way out of the building, where I knew I’d find Tommy and Carol skipping class to make out. As I had predicted, they were under the bleachers and fused at the mouth. I didn’t care if I had just walked in on them. I had to tell them: 

“I’ll do it!”


	2. Seducing Billy Hargrove

I could never remember if my parents were in London, Paris, or New York whenever they were away on business. Hell, they could have been on Mars, for all I cared. Not that I could blame either of them, of course, who wanted to spend forever in Hawkins? I know that I would travel, too, when I was old enough to leave this little hick town behind and become…something.

Still, my parents did have some impeccable timing. Perfect time to host a party. That was what Tommy called “Plan A.”

“Billy hasn’t missed a single party since he moved here,” he said. “A party at your place is the perfect opportunity to catch his interest. You just have to invite him first. Give him the bait, y’know?”

I nodded, but was secretly searching for the answers to all the questions swimming in my head, all of them leading to one, in particular: how was I supposed to flirt with a guy? I was no stranger to dating. I’d been with maybe six or seven girls before Nancy. I had a natural talent when it came to flirting with girls. All I had to do was find one with a pretty face, look at her as if she were the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen, flash her that award-wining smile, chat with her for a bit, crack a joke or two, and bam! The panties fell clean off. Nancy was different, though. It took me a while to get her to even go out with me and…well, I never cared as much for the other girls before her. I certainly hadn’t since. 

But how the hell was I supposed to flirt with a guy, especially a guy like Billy Hargrove? Was I supposed to touch his arm or his thigh like the girls did to me? Laugh at his jokes as if he was actually funny? Pretend to like metal music even though it gave me a headache? Comment on how good-looking he was? He _was_ good-looking, I’d give him that much.

All of these questions and more ran through my head, as I found Billy on the school parking lot, resting on the hood of his Camaro with a cigarette in one hand and a book in the other. _Twelfth Night,_ this time. Was he finished with _Cyrano_ already? I looked back at Tommy and Carol, who kept their thumbs up, and took a deep breath before approaching him.

“Hi, Billy!” I may have said a little _too_ enthusiastically. Billy said nothing, but he looked back and forth before looking at me, as if he was wondering if there was some other Billy that I was calling to. 

_Talk to him,_ I told myself. _Talk about something that he likes. But what_ does _he like?_

“You, er,” I continued to falter. “You’re reading.”

_Nice one, Steve._

He raised an eyebrow. “Well observed.”

“You, uh, like to read?”

“No, I just like to stare blankly at the pages so it makes me look sharper than I really am.”

I laughed, for real, but then I kept laughing and laughing until I started to cough.

“Are you okay?”

“Yeah!” My voice broke. _Keep going._ “Yes, I’m fine. Shakespeare, right? How do you read…?”

“What are you doing, Harrington?”

I almost choked on my own words. “Um, talking to you?”

“My point, exactly. Why?”

“Because I…I want to.”

Billy looked at me as if I’d just grown an extra head. It wasn’t entirely a lie, though. I actually did want to know how he could read Shakespeare without losing the will to live. 

“If this is some kinda prank, Harrington, you’re a dead man walking.”

“It’s not a prank,” I only half-lied. “I actually do want to talk to you. I mean, I know we’ve never really been buddies, but I want to get to know you. You’re, uh…cool.”

“Cool?” he smirked. “People who run away to join the circus are cool. I’m just some dude who likes to read.”

“Yeah, but you’re also some dude who hails from California, drives a sweet Camaro, looks good with an earring and…” I cleared my throat “…looks even better in a crop top.”

Billy’s face was suddenly as red as a tomato. I don’t think I’d ever seen him blush so hard. With a smile that had never failed me before, I stepped a little closer and leaned on the hood of his car next to him.

“Listen,” I said, lowering my voice. “My folks are out of town this weekend and I was gonna throw a party. You can come if you want.”

He looked me up and down and bit his lip. “I’ll think about it.”

“You do that,” I said and walked away. Why I winked, I don’t know, but it made him even redder. I knew that I had hit a nerve and couldn’t help but mentally pat myself on the back. When I looked back at him, he looked like he could barely focus on the book he was reading. From a short distance, I could see him fiddling with the silver pendant that he always wore. I hadn’t seen him without it before or since.

I found Tommy and Carol watching from the schoolyard.

“Well?” Carol urged. “Is he in?”

I shrugged. “I dunno. He said he’d think about it.”

Tommy smirked. “He’ll make it, don’t worry. Like I said, Billy hasn’t missed a single party since he moved here.”

* * *

Tommy wasn’t wrong. Billy made it, alright. He came before most people did. “Think I was gonna miss the opportunity of free booze?” he asked with a smile and a shrug when I pretended to be happy to see him. I wasn’t going to say anything about the fat lip. Yet. 

I couldn’t remember the last time my house had been so crowded. Strangely, it made me feel more at home than it had in months. Friends, enemies, and strangers alike danced to hits ranging from Stevie Nicks’ hypnotic husk to David Bowie’s highest note. Glasses were raised and faces were stuffed. By the crack of dawn, there would no doubt be the lingering stench of booze, weed, and sex and it would all be worth it. I could almost _feel_ the crown back on my head. If only I could get a moment with the certain bastard who was still wearing it.

Seducing Billy Hargrove was even harder with the party than without. I could barely get a word out of the guy without someone tearing him away. If I wanted to offer him a drink, someone else would get it for him. If I wanted to dance with him, someone else would butt in. If I wanted to talk to him, someone else would steer the conversation. Hell, if I so much as _looked_ at him, someone else would look his way. What was everyone’s obsession with this guy? 

“Any luck?” Tommy asked. 

“Nope,” I growled over another beer. “I can’t even get a minute alone with him. As if being the new kid wasn’t enough, he has to be the _gay_ new kid.”

Tommy shook his head and watched Billy dancing in the crowd. At the corner of my eye, I could see Carol smiling. I knew that smile. That was the smile that came with either of the best or worst ideas. 

“Leave it to me,” she said and waltzed into the crowd, which seemed to make way for her like the parting of the seas. The music stopped. Groans echoed throughout the room, laced with curses and confusion in the crowd. “Sorry to break up the party, folks,” Carol projected. “But we are hosting a game of seven minutes in heaven in the back room. Anyone interested, follow me.”

With that, the music was back on and people were trailing behind Carol. I saw her urging Billy to follow too, but he looked like he’d rather have a hernia repair than play the game. To this day, I don’t know how she got him to play in the end, but she did it. I’ll give her some credit: she knew how to persuade people.

“You can thank me later,” she said to me with a wink. _“King_ Steve.”

Everyone including Billy all sat in a circle surrounding an empty wine bottle. Carol announced me as the first to spin the bottle. With a flick of the wrist, I wondered if I could telepathically force the bottle to land on Billy. Instead, it landed on Robin. I’ll admit she was hot, ripped jeans and grungy t-shirts aside, but she wasn’t Billy.

The better part of that seven minutes in heaven was spent in awkward silence until I tried to speak.

“I’m not making out with you,” she said before I could so much as open my mouth. “I’m only playing this stupid came so I can have a moment alone with someone else.”

Awkward. “Okay. Um, who?”

“Not you.”

 _Well, this is nice,_ I thought. _Just a few months as a single loser and even the rocker chick is repulsed by me. Lovely!_

I must have spun that bottle at least seven more times, taking turns with Carrie, Sue, Meg, Beverly, Annie, Trisha, and George. That last one was awkward, to say the least. Finally, the bottle had pointed in the punk’s very direction. I faked a smile for him and lead him to the nearby closet, trying to ignore the taunts that rang in my ears and trying even harder to ignore Nancy and Jonathan kissing in the corner. I knew that I shouldn’t have invited them.

Billy looked about as amused as a cat in the rain when I closed the door behind us.

“So,” I grinned. “Here we are.”

“Yeah, no shit.”

Biting my lip, I took the moment to make my move, stepping towards him and taking his hand into mine. He stepped back the moment I touched him. I only wanted to hold his hand.

“What are you doing?” he demanded.

“That’s how the game is played, right? Might as well make these seven minutes last.”

Billy stared at me for some time, looking as if he was trying to read something written on my face. “Were you waiting for a turn with me?”

“Maybe.”

He laughed, but didn’t smile. “Look, man, if this is about what everyone’s been saying about me, you might as well save your breath ‘cause everyone and their grandma has been fucking around with me about it tonight and, to be honest with you, it’s getting kinda old.” 

I could feel my award-winning smile fading already. By this point, I was used to seeing him joking about what everyone had been saying about him. Tonight, he looked tired, like he’d spent too long forcing himself through a smile. 

“I don’t want to fuck around with you.”

Billy rolled his eyes. “Sure you don’t.” 

“I don’t. I actually _did_ want a turn with you ‘cause…well, I like you.”

His eyes were wide now. It had only then occurred to me just how blue they were. Again, he laughed, but didn’t smile. “You’re shitting me.”

“I’m really not. I meant what I said the other day. I think you’re really cool and—well, I won’t lie—kinda hot, too.”

Billy opened his mouth, but nothing came out. I sometimes wonder if he could let anything out or what he would have said if he could. 

“Actually,” I continued. “I was wondering if you’d like to go out with me sometime.”

“Harrington, if this is some kind of joke…”

“It isn’t.” I mentally crossed my fingers. “I want you to go out with me.”

He looked me up and down and bit his lip. He started to fiddle with his pendant again. At a closer glance than the other day, I could see the depiction of the Virgin Mary carved into it. Was he a Catholic, too? I almost felt sorry for the bastard.

Finally, he looked me dead straight in the eye and said sternly: “Benny’s Diner, tomorrow at six o’clock. Don’t make me wait.”

“It’s a date,” I said with a smile. He didn’t smile back. 

Once the door was opened, we were surrounded by the catcalls and wolf whistles from before it was closed. Billy flipped every last one of them so easily that he almost looked like the devil-may-care teen I was so used to seeing. I, on the other hand, felt strangely naked under the stares of strangers.

Finally, I found both Tommy and Carol, giddy from however many drinks they’d managed to chug in the past hour. “So?” Tommy grinned. “Is he in?”

“He’s in.”


	3. Two First Dates

Benny’s Diner wasn’t the ideal place for a first date, or any date at all. I assumed that was why Billy chose such a place to go. Still, I must have tried on a hundred different outfits before making my way out the door. Jeans and a t-shirt, pressed pants and a sweater, a fucking suit, and when the hell did I get a sailor’s outfit? In the end, I wore the cleanest jeans I owned—which were also the tightest—and a button-up shirt that had never failed me before. Cologne, too, couldn’t forget that. I don’t know why I spent so much time on my hair either. 

Christ, what was I? A girl? No, I was just a guy going on a date with another guy. A guy named Billy Hargrove. 

“Don’t fuck this up,” I told my reflection before I left. I almost wanted to apologize to the picture of Nancy that still stuck to my mirror for what I was about to do.

I arrived at the diner at six on the dot. Billy was at a nearby table with another book in his hands. With a closer look, I could see that it was _The Picture of Dorian Gray_ this time. _How many books can a guy read in a week?_ I asked myself. Shaking my head of it, I approached him with my signature smile. He just barely smiled back.

“Hi,” I said as cheerily as I possibly could. “You look great.”

That wasn’t a lie. He did look great. I wondered if it came naturally to him to look great no matter what he wore, but this time he wasn’t wearing the grungy band t-shirts and leather jackets that I was so used to seeing. Instead, he wore a button-up shirt that matched the colour of his eyes and left it half-open to make way for his pendant. I wondered if it had been glued to his skin.

“You too,” he said and I think he meant it. “I ordered us some fries before you got here. Hope that’s okay.”

I told him that it was, but wondered why he cared what I thought of it. When the waitress had arrived with the menus, I watched as Billy openly flirted with the waitress. I recognized that smile he gave her, since it was the same smile I had used a hundred times on other girls, and that saucy wink he gave her when he ordered the fish burger. He did all this while grazing his foot against mine. I quickly tucked my feet back, far away from his. 

_Start a conversation,_ I told myself. _Say something._ “So, uh, how was your day?”

“Fine,” he shrugged. “Bit sore from that threesome with a drag queen and a bear, but at least I made enough money out of it to cure myself of that gay plague I caught from a transexual.”

I stared, wide-eyed with my jaw hanging low, like an idiot. Did he mean that? Were the rumours true? A smirk was playing at the corner of his lips when he looked up at me from behind the menu.

“That was a joke.” 

“Oh,” I laughed nervously. _He’s funny,_ I noticed. _Tell him how funny he is._ “That was pretty funny. I mean, not funny if you _do_ have the gay plague. Not that I’m saying you do.” 

_Nice one, Steve._

Billy raised an eyebrow. “I don’t, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

I nodded, sighing in relief, though I probably shouldn’t have sighed so heavily. 

“You’re not nervous, are you?” he asked. 

_I’m terrified._ “Me? Nah, I’m fine.”

“Then why are you shaking?”

I didn’t notice until he pointed it out. My palms were sweating and my fingers trembling uncontrollably. I didn’t even know why I was shaking. 

“You’ve never been on a date with a guy before, have you?”

I shook my head. “No, I can’t say that I have.”

Much to my surprise, Billy smiled. It was a shockingly soft smile with a gentle gaze that made him look almost like a completely different person. He leaned in closer and reached for my hand. I didn’t mean to shake it off so harshly. 

“The waitress is taking her sweet time,” I pointed out with a poor attempt at a laugh. “Shouldn’t we have gotten those fries by now?”

By now, his smile has fallen flat. “What’s the rush, Harrington?”

“No rush, I’m just hungry.” A waitress passed us by as if we were invisible. “Excuse me, miss, could we get…?”

“Well, maybe we should have just gone to McDonalds.”

“No, I wanted to meet you _here.”_ Another passed. “Miss?”

“Really? ‘Cause right now you look like you’d rather be at home with your cronies than be seen with me.”

“What? I came here, didn’t I?”

“Oh, how generous of you!”

“Hey, don’t be like that,” I looked around for a waiter or waitress. “Come on!”

“Actually,” Billy grumbled, his eyes now as dark as the night sky. “I think I’m gonna go.”

“No! Billy, wait!”

But he had already gathered his jacket and marched out the door. I was afraid the glass on the door was going to crack when it was slammed shut. Without thinking, I ran after him and just barely managed to catch him before he reached the Camaro. 

“Billy,” I called. “Wait!”

He stopped at the car door, but turned to stare daggers at me.

“Look,” I said. “I was being an idiot back there.”

“Well, I’ll give you points for self-awareness. Do you want a cookie?”

“No, I want to go on a date with you.”

“Bullshit!” He spat the word out like venom. “You know, if you wanted to mess with me, all you had to do was call me a faggot like everyone else does.”

“That’s not what I want!”

“Oh? Then what _do_ you want?”

 _My crown,_ I almost said. _I want my crown back._ Billy slowly stepped towards me with the grace of a wildcat until he was close enough to touch. His eyes were locked with mine and I felt like I couldn’t look away from them. If I did that, I’d be admitting defeat. I opened my mouth, trying to find the words. Nothing came out.

Billy laughed coldly. He looked angry and irritated and… _hurt?_

“I knew it,” he growled. “What would a pretty boy like you want with someone like me?”

Before I could so much as beg, Billy had hopped into the Camaro, slammed the door shut and sped away. There was no point in running after him. All I could do was kick a nearby can and curse myself.

* * *

My face was buried in my arms for the better part of the next lunch period. Every time I looked up, all I could see was Billy reading his next book, _Oedipus Rex,_ which I guessed was his smartass way of calling me a motherfucker. The bastard was taunting me, I just knew it, and the shrill sounds of Tommy and Carol yapping didn’t make me feel any better. 

“Come on,” Tommy urged. “It can’t have been that bad.”

“I implied that he had AIDS.”

“So? He probably does.”

Part of me wanted to punch him for that. “He doesn’t.”

“Whatever, I’m just saying that you should probably give it another go. I mean, the guy’s probably so desperate for dick, he’ll take you back on the spot.”

“Forget it, Tommy,” I said, throwing my hands in the air. “I fucked it up!”

“So?” Carol shrugged. “Un-fuck it up.”

“Un-fuck it up,” I muttered. “How do I un-fuck it up?”

“I dunno. Kiss and make up, maybe?”

I rolled my eyes and marched away, unable to bear another moment around them. From a few steps away, I could hear Tommy asking Carol: “What’s his problem?” This wasn’t the first time I found myself wondering why I even hung out with either of them. It’s still strange to think that I used to call them my best friends. 

Finally, past the parking lot and under the bleachers, I managed to find a space to breathe. I found myself staring into space until my eyes landed on a nearby poster with a cartoon clown smiling before its title: _Hawkins’ Annual Spring Fair, 1985_. I remembered loving the Spring Fair when I was a kid. I hadn’t been there now since I was thirteen. 

My gaze drifted away to the crisp blue sky. I took a deep breath and found the fresh air not quite as fresh as I would have liked it to be. I could smell smoke. That was when I realized that I wasn’t alone. 

“Hey,” a familiar voice burst, making me jump. “Who pissed on your parade?”

I looked to my left and immediately groaned. Robin was on the other side of the bleachers with a cigarette in hand. _Exactly what I need,_ I thought. _I just keep going from one asshole to the next, don’t I?_

“What are you doing here?” I asked. 

“Same as you,” she smirked. “Just wanted to be alone. Wanna smoke?”

She held a box of Marlboros in my face. I probably shouldn't have—maybe because I had been trying to quit, because I didn’t want to smoke with her, or because smoking, in general, reminded me of Billy—but _God,_ did I need a cigarette. _Fuck it!_ I took a cigarette from the box and let her light it. One drag and everything felt better. Well, almost everything. 

“Seriously,” she said, leaning on a bleacher seat. “You okay? You look a little blue.”

Blue, like Billy’s eyes. “I’m just kind of in a sticky situation, that’s all.”

“Do you wanna talk about it?”

I didn’t, really, but who else was I going to talk to? _Here goes nothing._ “I went on a date last night and it didn’t really go so well.”

Robin rested her chin on the ball of her hand, listening intently. “What happened?”

I told her almost everything; that my date was someone I had only known for a little while, that I ended up in the closet with them in seven minutes in heaven, that we agreed to have dinner together, and that things started off okay, but also of how I may or may not have been a dick to them before the date even had a chance to go anywhere. I said nothing of my date being another guy, let alone a certain guy with a mullet. 

“You like this person,” she said. It wasn’t a question, it was a statement.

I wasn’t sure if I could have used the word “like” to describe my feelings for Billy. I nodded, but didn’t say: “Yes.”

“So apologize to them,” she said as if it were the most obvious answer to everything. “It’s not rocket science.”

“But I did apologize.” _Didn't I?_

“No, I mean _really_ apologize.”

“I don’t follow.”

Robin took another drag as she looked me up and down. “This person,” she said. “What are they into?”

“Um…books?”

“Great! So, give ‘em a book that you think they might like, so you get them on your good side. After that, just tell ‘em you’re sorry. If you’re lucky, they’ll accept your apology and probably swoon in the process.”

I had to laugh at the mental image of Billy swooning. “And if I’m not so lucky?”

“Then you accept that and move on. They don’t _owe_ you their forgiveness.”

Taking another drag, I thought about it. Billy seemed to like all kinds of books. So far, I’d seen him with the classics and he liked boys. He wouldn’t have tried to hold my hand if he didn’t. 

* * *

After school, I must have searched through the local bookstore for hours until I found just the right book. Before I wrapped it up—I could only find birthday wrapping paper—I wrote my apology on the cover page. Hopefully, Billy would forgive my god-awful writing if he couldn’t forgive me. Once the book was signed, neatly wrapped, and ready to be given, I found myself both anticipating and dreading its owner’s reaction.

 _Jesus Christ,_ I thought. _Why do I care so much?_ Sometimes I wish I could go back in time and answer myself that question.

It took me two days to buck up the courage to give Billy that book. We had English class together and I tried—boy, did I try—to get his attention. I even tried tossing a couple of notes to him, one of which was caught by Mrs. Byers and tossed into the trash. At some point, I’m pretty sure I saw him scribbling something in his notebook that was big enough for me to see: _Fuck off!_

 _Then you accept that and move on,_ Robin’s voice echoed in my head. _They don’t owe you their forgiveness._

But I didn’t even get a chance to say that I was sorry. 

As soon as the bell rang, I followed the rest of class, but hid just outside the door in hopes of Billy following soon after. I wasn’t expecting to stay there for very long.

“Mr. Hargrove,” I heard Mrs. Byers call him. “Can I have a word?”

“Only if it’s a good one, Joyce,” I heard Billy’s voice quip. “You don’t mind if I call you Joyce, do ya?”

Mrs. Byers laughed coolly. “As a matter of fact, I do. I just wanted to tell you how impressed I am with your recent essay on _Dracula._ You have quite a way with words and I must say that you certainly gave Mina’s character the credit she deserved. I respect that.”

“Thank you!” Billy’s voice had an unusual chirp to it. “I’ve always had a soft spot for Mina.”

“I can see that. I can also see that you have quite a skill for mind-reading.”

_Mind-reading?_

“I’m not sure I follow, Joyce.”

“It’s Mrs. Byers and your essay is almost identical to Teddy Valentine's. Would you mind explaining how you managed to accomplish that?”

Billy said nothing. I half-expected to hear a joke or two from him in his defence, but heard nothing. 

“Billy,” I heard Mrs. Byers continue, her humorous tone dropping instantly. “I know that you haven’t been here for very long and that’s why I’m not going to report this to Principal Hopper, but I _will_ give you a warning: plagiarism is a serious offence and one that we could easily expel you for.”

“So, why don’t you expel me now?”

“Because I know that you’re better than this.”

There was a long pause between them. I could hear Billy sighing heavily. He sounded so tired, like he’d been carrying the weight of the world on his shoulders. 

“It won’t happen again,” he said. “Mrs. Byers.”

“I should hope not. You can go.”

With that, Billy passed by me as though I were invisible. I bit my lip, wondering what would bring him to this, The guy read a book a day like an apple. Why would he feel the need to copy someone else’s work? I shook my head of it and followed him to his locker. 

My stomach jolted just seeing his eyes meet mine. 

“Hi, Billy.” He said nothing and didn’t for some time. “I have something for you.”

When I handed the present to him, he looked at it as if it were some sort of alien life form and sneered when he opened it, flipping through the pages over and over until he finally looked me in the eyes.

“My birthday’s in July,” he said. “I also hate Forster.” 

_Damnit!_ I cursed myself over and over. _Damnit, damnit, damnit!_ I knew that _Maurice_ would have been too on the nose. 

“But thanks.”

 _Well, I didn’t see_ that _one coming._

“I just knew that you liked books,” I explained. “I noticed that you had a bit of a thing for the classics and I couldn’t think of anything else.”

There was that smile again. Somehow, that smile would always sneak up on me and take me by surprise. I didn't want to admit that it was a beautiful smile, even to myself; least of all to myself. His smile grew just a little when he opened the book to read the message inside. 

“‘ _Billy’_ ,” he read aloud and laughed. “‘ _I was a dick: too hard on you. Steve.’_ ”

“I know, it’s hardly Shakespeare.”

“I was a little hard on you, too.” My eyes went wide. “I get why you were a little nervous about being seen with me. You never know who will catch you with another guy in that case scenario.”

I nodded, but had to wonder if he had been caught before. Was that where the rumours came from? “So, truce?”

He smiled and shook my hand. Damn, he had a good grip! “Truce.”

“Also,” I continued. “I was wondering if we could try again; get it right this time. We could go to the Spring Fair. Maybe that sounds lame, but I think it’d be fun. You don’t have to if you don’t want to, though. You know that, right? ‘Cause you don’t owe me anything and I get it if you don’t want to…”

“Steve,” he cut in. “I want to.”

“You mean that?”

He nodded. “I mean that."

We agreed to meet at the fairground gates that very night at seven. If he were a girl, I would have kissed him on the cheek. I almost did. 

* * *

Billy looked more himself in his tight jeans, old leather jacket, and an AC/DC t-shirt. I must have looked pretty lame in comparison with my pressed pants and sea green sweater, but he just looked me up and down as if I was something to eat. The moment I stepped towards him, he grabbed my hand and ran towards the ticket booth like an excited child. He must have spent fifty bucks on tickets, no doubt earned from whatever he’d gotten up to with other guys in the bathroom. I bit my tongue, trying not to bring that up. 

Stuffing the tickets in his pockets, Billy rubbed his hands together like a cartoon villain up to no good. “So,” he said. “You probably know this fair better than I do. What do we do first? Roller coaster or whack-a-mole?” 

I shrugged. “I dunno, you pick.”

“Well, don’t get _too_ excited.”

“Sorry, it’s just been a while since I’ve been to the fair.”

Billy furrowed his brow. “Why’s that?”

I paused, wishing he hadn’t asked me that, but then I’d brought this on myself. 

“I used to like it,” I told him. “My parents used to take me every year when I was a kid. My mom would let me eat all the candy that I wanted and my dad would let me ride any ride. Sometimes, one of them would even win a prize for me. Then one year my mom took me while my dad was at an important court case, the next it was just my dad when my mom had a night shift at the hospital, and then one year they were both too busy. I ended up going myself ‘cause I was too old for a babysitter. I ended up getting sick on too much candy after too many rides and I tried winning something myself and didn’t get shit. I guess I kinda gave up on it after that.”

Billy’s smile was quickly fading as I told him this. “Shit,” he said softly. “That sucks.” He actually sounded sorry for me.

I shook my head of it. “It’s no big deal.”

“Doesn’t sound like it to me.”

Again, I shrugged. “Why are you so excited, anyway?”

“Well, apart from going to the fair with a pretty boy, I guess it kinda reminds me of home.”

“California?” I questioned with an awkward chuckle. “It’s mid-spring and there’s still a bit of snow left from two months ago.”

“Yeah, but there’s still a fair. Back home, there was this huge fairground by the boardwalk and my buddies and I would hang out there all the time, going to concerts and partying all night. Even when it was closed, we’d sneak in to get drunk, smoke up and eat our weight in California soul food.”

“What’s soul food?”

Billy’s eyes went wide. “You don’t know what soul food is? Oh, Steve Harrington, you are missing out! It’s only the taste of California itself!”

I shook my head. How was I supposed to know? I had never been to California. “You miss it, don’t you?”

Billy smiled weakly and nodded, but took a deep breath before taking my hand again. “Enough of this self-pity shit,” he grinned. “I came here to have fun and to cheer you up, I’m gonna win you one of those.”

I looked to where he was pointing: a bottle-toss booth holding rows and rows of stuffed animals from the tiniest teddies to the biggest bears, every single one of them in all colours of the rainbow. Before I could so much as open my mouth, Billy grabbed me by the hand and dragged me to the booth. I was almost out of breath by the time he grabbed the first ball.

“You really don’t have to.”

“But I want to,” he said taking his first shot. “Besides, I’ve got my eye on that tie-dye fella up there. Y’know, the one that looks like you?”

Billy nodded towards a pink, purple, and blue teddy bear that was the size of my own torso. I couldn’t help but laugh at little. “Jesus, how old are you again?”

“Five,” he said taking another shot, “and a half.”

Billy took one more shot. Bullseye! He certainly looked five and a half when he started jumping up and down in celebration of his victory. The bored teenager at the booth reached for the tie-dyed teddy bear and handed it to Billy.

“Congratulations, Harrington, you’re a father.”

Laughing, I took the teddy bear in my hands and named him Ted.

* * *

We could have been at the fair for hours, days, weeks, months, or years and I wouldn’t have wanted to go home. There was enough candy to rot our teeth and enough rides to make our heads spin, but I don’t think it was either of those things that made me feel as high as a kite without even a single drug in my system. I was actually having fun with Billy. There was something about seeing him happy about something–whether it was another game of whack-a-mole or another spin on the roller coaster–that made me smile so hard it made my cheeks hurt. 

Our last ride was on the Ferris Wheel. I held Ted close as Billy and I shared one last bag of candied popcorn. While we were waiting in line, I felt his hand on the small of my back and he gave me _that_ look. Behind us, I could hear someone cough: “Queers.” I looked back to see an acne-scarred boy that I recognized from school staring into space like he didn’t say anything. Billy managed to catch his eye, though, with his fingers curled into a fist and his tongue pushed against a hollowed cheek. He looked like he was giving a blowjob to a ghost, which left the boy blushing and me wondering.

“How do you do it?” I asked once the wheel began to turn.

“Do what?”

“Laugh it all off,” I explained. “Anyone else would spend their school days in the bathroom crying if everyone kept talking shit about them the way they keep talking shit about you, but you never seem to let any of it get to you. How?” 

He shrugged and popped a kernel into his mouth. “It’s easier that way.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean,” he thought for a moment. “Let’s say people were talking shit about you over something. Maybe they’re saying you…I dunno, fucked a melon, or something.”

I almost choked on my next bite. “Is that even possible?”

“Just humour me, okay? Let’s say everyone’s talking about that one time you fucked a melon, calling you all sorts o’ names or writing shit on the walls. Even worse, maybe they’re right. Maybe you did it once because you were curious and you’re not proud of it, but what would you rather do? Cry about it or own it?”

I tried to let that sink in. “I still don’t get it.”

“Well, I’ve always seen it this way: if I let any of that shit get to me, I’m giving them exactly what they want and basically confirming what they think about me. On the other hand, if I just crack a joke about it, then that’s all it is to them: a joke.”

“So, you’re laughing _with_ them?”

“Something like that. Anyway, what’s it to you?”

I shrugged back and held Ted even closer to my chest. I couldn’t find the answer. I had grown so used to holding it back and biting my tongue that it seemed lodged into the back of my throat, like a pill that I’d swallowed the wrong way. I kept waiting for Billy to pull the answer out of me, push me, shove me, tease me, or something, but he just listened.

“I guess,” I managed to say, though my voice was weak. “I wish _I_ could do that, but I don’t think I’m brave enough. Or smart enough, for that matter.”

It just spilled from my mouth. I didn’t know why and I still don’t know why. Maybe I’ll never know why. All I knew was that I’d just told Billy what I would never have told anyone and he wasn’t looking at me like I was some freak. 

Billy’s hand crept into mine and this time I didn’t swipe it away. “I think you’re braver than you think; smarter, too.”

I turned to him. “What makes you think that?”

“You asked _me_ out, didn't you?”

He smiled at me in such a way that I couldn’t help but smile back. I tightened my grip on his hand and didn’t want to let go.

Maybe I didn’t hate him _that_ much.

* * *

It was nearly midnight when Billy dropped me off. Strangely enough, I didn't mind the metal music as much as I thought I would and even learned a lot more about Metallica than I expected to. As soon as I saw my neighbourhood around the corner, I almost wanted the Camaro to break down, so the night would last just a little bit longer. Sadly, there was my house, which my date was at least polite enough to walk me to. 

At the door, I had to say it: "I had fun tonight."

"Me too," Billy smiled. "We should do this again sometime."

I nodded, trying to think of what else to do and where else to go, but everything was lost to me when he stepped closer. Billy looked left and right before leaning over towards me. Feeling a sudden rush of butterflies in my stomach, I turned away, but didn't stop him from kissing my cheek. I felt like such a pussy. He didn't seem to mind, though.

"I'll see you at school, pretty boy."

I was beginning to like that nickname. "Not if I see you first."

He chuckled and turned back to his car with a spring in his step. As he drove away, I closed the door behind me, feeling light-headed. I looked to the tie-dyed teddy bear in my hands, tracing the blended pink, purple, and blue.

_What happened tonight?_


	4. Billy’s House

“So,” Tommy’s electronic voice crackled in my ear. “How did it go?”

“Better than I thought,” I said, trying to focus on the mess of homework scattered on my desk. It was a Sunday evening and I had an English test first thing that following morning, but—of course—that wasn’t my main focus. “And I can _definitely_ tell you that the dude’s gay.”

“How do you know?”

“Well, he held my hand, for one thing.” _Also, he almost kissed me and I_ could _have kissed him back, but that’s not important._

I heard him make a noise that crackled on the line. “Psh! So what?”

“So, why would he be holding my hand if he didn’t like me?”

“Did he put your hand down his pants?”

I winced. “No.”

“Did he put his hand down _your_ pants?”

“No.”

“Did he even _kiss_ you?”

“No. I mean, not really.” 

“So, it doesn’t prove anything!”

My eyes hurt from rolling so far back into my head. “What _more_ do you want me to do with the guy, Hagan? Paint a rainbow on him? Catch him in a dress? Play hide the sausage with him and make a tape of it?”

“Ugh, gross! No, I just want the guy on the hook.”

“You talk about him like he’s some kind of fish.”

“Ooh,” his voice suddenly went abnormally high. “Do I detect a little concern there? You’re starting to sound like you actually _care_ about this fruitcake.”

I bit the inside of my cheek. “I'm just saying that the guy's still a person and he’s actually not so bad once you get to know him.”

“Yeah, funnily enough, I don’t _want_ to get to know him.”

I frowned and shook my head. “Why are we friends again?”

“Ask me again when you’re back on your throne, _King_ Steve.”

Tommy hung up before another word could be said. I sighed heavily, still hearing my old nickname echoed in my head, wondering if I had ever hated it this much before. Thoughts were spinning round and round in my head to the point that I myself found myself spinning in my office chair. With every turn, my eye landing on the tie-dyed teddy bear resting on my bed, like a dancer keeping his eye on something to keep his head from spinning.

“Don’t look at me like that,” I muttered at him. “You’re telling me you never had this kind of problem?”

Ted, of course, said nothing. He simply stared with that blank expression in his beady little eyes.

“That’s what I thought, you little slut.”

* * *

Monday mornings made me wish I could go back in time and kill William Shakespeare before he ever had the chance to pick up a pen. I must have read through _A Midsummer Night’s Dream_ seven times in this stupid class by that point and still had no idea why Hermia and Lysander had to run away, what Helena saw in Demetrius, or why Titania would fall for a dude with a donkey’s head. Better yet, why the hell was it all spoken in riddles? 

I looked over to Billy, who kept his eye on the test and wrote away, as if this was a piece of cake to him. Mrs. Byers was still reading her way through papers. She wouldn't notice if I wrote a little something. Tearing a piece of paper from one of my notebooks, I wrote down: _How are you still sane?_ Billy didn’t seem all that surprised when he saw the crinkled piece of paper thrown on his desk. He smiled at me when he read the note and scribbled in response: _Easy. 1, b. 2, a. 3, c. 4, a. 5. b. 6, Athens. 7, Lysander. 8, Demetrius. 9, Snug. 10, Love in idleness._

I couldn’t believe it. When I looked up at him with wide eyes, he shot a wink my way. 

Before I could mouth a quiet thanks, I saw him near jump at a paper airplane shot at his head. _Faggot,_ it read. In the corner of my eye, I saw a familiar acne-scarred face smirking until Billy shot him a cold glance. 

Anyone else would have thrown the thing back. Billy, on the other hand, threw it at Mrs. Byers. _Shit_ , I thought. _He’s not…_

“May I ask who threw that?” Mrs. Byers asked coldly.

Billy only shrugged, but the acne-scarred teen piped in his broken voice: “Hargrove, Miss.”

Mrs. Byers raised an eyebrow and studied the writing on the paper plane. “Doesn’t look like Hargrove’s writing to me. I’ll see you after school, Thomson.”

It took all my strength to keep from laughing. _Well played, Billy._

The entire class heaved a heavy sigh of relief when the test was over and done with. It felt like a huge weight off of my chest, but of course, Billy shrugged it off like he did anything. Even after all that he’d told me at the fair, I still had no idea how he did it. 

“Ugh!” I groaned. “I still don’t know how you’re still sane.”

“Is it possible sanity should die while he hath such meet food to feed it as Signor Harrington?” The quote went in one ear and out the other. _“Much Ado About Nothing,_ dumbass! Y’know, if you wanna get any better at English, maybe you oughta start by reading _outside_ of class.”

“Hey, we can’t _all_ read a book a day like you do.” Billy gave a seemingly pout that was quickly followed by that wicked smile I knew all too well. When he opened his locker, I could see three books lined up for him already: _Lord of the Flies, 1984,_ and the copy of _Maurice_ that I gave him, which I think had a bookmark. I pointed to the lineup of books. “I rest my case.”

Billy smiled weakly. “This is really eating you, isn’t it?”

“What do you mean?”

“This issue you’ve got with your grades.”

I shrugged. “Well, if I don’t get them up any time soon, I won’t graduate and if I don’t graduate, I won’t go to uni and if I don’t go to uni, I won’t become a doctor like my mom or a lawyer like my dad and if I don’t become a doctor like my mom or a lawyer like my dad, I’ll spend the rest of my life working as a janitor and living in a shitty little trailer where I’ll grow old and alone until I’m either abducted by aliens or eaten to death by stray cats.”

Billy snickered. “Okay, first of all, you’ve skipped maybe fifty or sixty years into a frankly bleak look into your future. Second of all, don’t be so hard on yourself. Third and last of all, if it’s really bugging you, you could always ask for a tutor.”

My eyes lit up. _Oh, this is perfect._ “Or I could ask you.”

Billy, still rummaging through his locker, stared at me as if I’d just said the stupidest thing he’d ever heard. “What?”

“ _You_ could be my tutor. I’ll pay you.”

He bit his lip, thinking long and hard. Money seemed to be an offer he couldn’t refuse. “Fine.”

I started beaming. _Perfect._ “Great, let’s start tonight.”

“I think I’ve got an open window. Just gimme your address and I’ll drive to yours.”

 _Almost perfect._ “Actually, my mom’s home. I was thinking go to your place."

That was when he stopped. He suddenly looked pale. “I don’t think that’s such a good idea.”

“C’mon, Billy, I’m desperate! Plus, you’re so smart you could probably turn my grades overnight.”

He smiled a little, but I could have blinked and missed that smile. “It’s not that. It’s just…my dad’s kind of an asshole. There’s a chance he’ll be working overtime or fooling around with one of his colleagues, but if he isn’t we’ll have to lay low. No hand-holding or anything.”

I took a step back. By now, I was so used to Billy cracking jokes about this sort of thing. When he talked about his dad, I barely recognized him. I didn’t know what the big deal was, anyway. My dad was an asshole, too. How bad could his dad be? 

Still, I nodded and told him: “I think I can do that.”

Billy nodded back and we agreed to meet at the parking lot after school. _This is almost too perfect!_

* * *

Billy’s house was nothing spectacular. If anything, it looked like a big white cardboard box with windows and a door and there was no gardening or decorum that would have given it the feeling of what should have been a home. There was, however, a girl playing in the road before it, trying again and again to flip her skateboard. She was a little redheaded who looked to be about thirteen years old. Although she looked nothing like the guy at my side, I knew exactly who she was by the familiar AC/DC t-shirt that she was wearing with her ripped jeans.

“Hey, dickbreath!” she called to Billy with a smile as if it were a simple hello.

“Hey, shitbird!” Billy called back with the same smile. “Neil and Susan home?”

“Nah, he’s still fooling around with whatshername and mom’s got a late shift at the office. Is this your new boyfriend?”

I could feel my cheeks burning and even saw Billy’s turning a little red, as he gestured towards me. “This is my friend, Steve. Steve, this is my little blister, Maxine.”

 _Friend?_ I shook the word off and offered my hand to the little tomboy. “Hi!” 

_“Step_ -blister,” she corrected, as she shook my hand. “And it’s just Max, as in Mad Max, not that my big bother will get that reference.” 

“Because you have shit taste in movies.”

“And you have shit taste in music. Maybe we have something in common after all.”

“Careful, shirtbird, you’re making it sound like we’re actually related. Also, you’re wearing _my_ AC/DC t-shirt.”

“Only because your Kate Bush t-shirt is dirty.”

I couldn’t help but laugh at the mental image of Billy wearing the pop singer’s face on his chest. Now, _that_ was something to tell Tommy and Carol. Billy cleared his throat.

“Whatever,” he shrugged. “Steve and I are just gonna study.”

“Is that what you’re calling it now? ‘Cause you can always call it ‘making out’ when dad’s not around, you know.”

Billy’s smile fell flat at the very mention of the word dad. “Just gimme a shout if he shows up, okay? And you don’t have to call him that.”

Max rolled her eyes. “Fine, but I can’t stay for long. I’m sleeping over at El’s.”

“Stay for an hour and I’ll fix your skateboard.”

“Get me a new one and I’ll make it an hour and a half.”

“Deal!”

The step-siblings shook on it. Billy ruffled Max’s red hair and passed by with a shared “I hate you!” in the same sing-song tone that anyone else would use when they said: “I love you.”

“She seems like a cool kid,” I said, as I watched her trying to flip her skateboard. “I didn’t know you had a step-sister.”

“You never asked,” Billy shrugged. “But yeah, she’s a little shit, but she’s _my_ little shit.”

I had never seen Billy talk about anyone so fondly. He talked about his step-sister as if they were a team. For all I knew, they probably were. 

I half-expected the house to look bigger on the inside when Billy opened the door, but the inside was just as dull and lifeless as the outside. There was a pile of empty beer cans in the corner, though, and the family portrait was broken, but that wasn’t what made me jump. A small grey creature sped towards my feet. A rat!

“Holy shit!” I must have sounded like a girl. I probably looked like a girl, too, by the way I was kicking and screaming, trying to get the thing away from me.

“Hey, hey, hey!” Billy shouted over me, grabbing the rodent and cradling it in his hands. “Careful! You okay, buddy? What are you doing running around the house, huh? Did Max let you out of your cage again?”

I couldn’t believe it. “That’s your _pet?”_

Billy smiled as the rat climbed up his arm to rest on his left shoulder. “Yeah, this is Oscar. Oscar, say hello to my friend, Steve.”

There was that word again. Oscar the rat squeaked as he played with Billy’s earring.

“Couldn’t you get a dog or a cat or something?”

“Neil’s allergic to cats and Susan’s afraid of dogs,” Billy explained. “Besides, I like rats. They’re crafty, aren’t you, Oscar?”

“You’re not afraid of catching anything? He’s biting your ear.”

“Relax, he’s only nibbling and he doesn’t have rabies. C’mon, I’ll prove it to you.”

Billy led me into the kitchen and reached for the cupboard. Oscar continued to climb up his owner and landed onto the top of his head. The little creature looked as if he was clapping his paws when he saw a jar of peanut butter being opened. Billy dipped a finger into the jar for a scoop and rubbed the peanut butter on my cheek with a smirk. 

“What are you doing?” I asked, wondering why his hand was on my shoulder.

“Trust me,” he said. Oscar sped across Billy’s arm as if it were a bridge. I tensed when I felt his little paws on my shoulder and winced when I felt his tiny tongue on my cheek. But it tickled and I was willing to admit that his happy little squeaks were pretty cute. Finally, I let out a laugh when I felt his furry little head nuzzling against my nose.

“See?” Billy laughed back. “He likes you.”

“I guess he’s not so bad.”

Billy was smiling at me. Like, really smiling. He looked so different when he smiled; softer and prettier. I tried to hide the redness in my cheeks behind the rat kissing the tip of my nose. 

“C’mon,” Billy said. “My room’s just two doors down the hallway. I’ll grab us a drink.”

I nodded and found his room where he said it was. Once I had managed to put Oscar back in his cage, I looked around, finding nothing particularly out of the ordinary, though I couldn’t believe how many books were scattered everywhere: _Paradise Lost_ by John Milton, _Flowers in the Attic_ by V.C. Andrews, _A Clockwork Orange_ by Anthony Burgess, _Lolita_ by Vladimir Nabokov, _The Hunchback of Notre Dame_ by Victor Hugo, _Jane Eyre_ by Charlotte Brontë and the list went on. There were posters of metal bands and horror movies, too, but I wasn’t expecting to see so many women in bikinis in the drawers until I found how many men in speedos they were hiding. On his bedside table was a well-thumbed copy of _Wuthering Heights_ laying next a picture of a woman on a beach and holding a smaller version of Billy. Just looking at their matching blond hair and almost identical smiles, I knew exactly who she was.

Billy’s desk fascinated me the most. Sitting next to a mountain of homework was a box that almost looked like a small treasure chest. I could hardly believe my eyes when I opened it. There must have been $1000s in cash in that little box alone. At first, I thought of all the other boys I’d seen Billy trading money with, thinking it was all in exchange for fooling around like everyone else. Until I saw a new name on his homework.

 _The Rise and Fall of Lucifer_ by Tommy Hagan? That was odd. I’d known Tommy since we were in kindergarten and I hardly pictured him reading something like _Paradise Lost,_ even if it was for English class. What was Tommy’s name doing on what was clearly Billy’s essay? That was when I saw other names on other essays: _The Destruction of Dollanganger_ by David Sutherland, _Alex; Evolutionary_ by Michael Patrick, _Humbert, Humbug, Pervert_ by Marko Winters, _Made of Stone_ by Paul McCarter, and _Breath of Fresh Eyre_ by Dwayne Wirth, to name a few. They were all in the same scribbled handwriting; Billy’s handwriting. 

_Wait a minute…_

“Hope you like Guinness,” Billy said, making me jump. “My old man may be a bastard and a half, but at least he’s got good…”

He stopped as soon as he saw me holding one of the many essays written on his desk. I saw his mouth open, but it looked like he was struggling to let anything out of it. 

“Did you write _all_ of these?” I asked. Billy didn’t answer. He only told me to put the paper down and forget it, but I couldn’t. “You did, didn’t you? What are you doing with everyone else’s homework?”

“Harrington?”

“Did you copy these guys or are they copying you?”

“Harrington.”

“Did they force you to do all this?”

“Harrington!”

I stopped, startled, as he stood right in front of me. His hand was firm on my wrist, making me drop the essay in my hand, though not with much force. 

“Yes,” he said quietly. “Yes, I did write all of these, but you can’t tell _anyone_ that I did.”

“Why not? Billy, these assholes are making you do their homework for them.”

“They’re not _making_ me do anything for them, Steve, they’re paying me for it.”

My eyes went wide. That’s when it all made sense. How could I have been so stupid not to put two and two together?

“It started with Tommy,” Billy explained. “He was having trouble with an English assignment, so I offered to help him out, but the deadline was too soon and the prick was so stupid I ended up doing his homework for him. He couldn’t think of any other way to thank me, so he gave me $50 for it. Then he gave me another $50 for a short story and then another $50 for an essay. That’s when I found out I could make some real good money doing this, so I offered to do the same for a few other people, and the rest is history.”

“So you’re letting people plagiarize your work for money? That’s crazy!” 

“I know and that’s why you can’t tell anyone. Half of the teachers in Hawkins already hate me enough to expel me on the spot if someone told ‘em that _I_ was the one copying other people.”

“Couldn’t you just tell them the truth?” 

“Who would believe me?”

“I would.”

“That’s very noble of you, but you still can’t tell anyone.”

“What’s all this money _for_ , anyway?”

He took a deep breath. “It’s so I can leave.”

My heart skipped a beat. “Leave? But you just…”

“Yes, when I have enough and when I turn eighteen, but I can’t afford my old man finding out about it. That is why you absolutely _cannot_ tell anyone. Swear on your life!”

His eyes were suddenly as cold and still as ice. Even his hand felt cold when I held it in mine. I gulped hard. “I swear on my life.”

“Good,” he nodded. “Can we move onto studying now?”

Billy slumped onto the bed and opened up a book. As he took another swig of the stout, I turned back to the books on his shelf. Trying to change the subject, I blurted out: “How many of these books have you read?”

Billy shrugged and opened a notebook. “Almost all of them, but I haven’t gotten to _De Profundis_ or _Orlando_ yet.”

I had no idea what either of those books were about, but it was worth it just to see the hint of light in his eyes again. Sitting down next to him, I had to ask: “Which one’s your favourite?”

The light in his eyes suddenly became brighter when he turned to his bedside table and picked up the well-thumbed copy of _Wuthering Heights._ He even chuckled a little. “Don’t ask me why.”

“Why?”

He thought a moment. “I dunno. I guess it’s because it reminds me of my mom or because I can kinda relate to Heathcliff. That sounds stupid, but…”

“It’s not stupid. It’s kinda…beautiful, actually.”

His smile softened when he looked at me and I was almost certain I saw a little tint of red in his cheeks. I didn’t know how to admit it, even to myself, but he was beautiful. That seemed like a strange word for it. Guys weren’t beautiful. They could be handsome, maybe, or good-looking; hot, definitely, but never beautiful. Billy was beautiful.

I shook my head of the thought. “How come it reminds you of your mom?”

“It was her favourite, too,” Billy explained. “She never told me, but I always knew because she would read it every Christmas.”

“Where is she now?”

His smile had now faded completely. “I dunno.”

Silence. Awkward silence. _Say something, Steve._ “What about your dad? What’s his favourite?”

Billy snickered. “Fuck, if I know!”

I grimaced and silently cursed myself. That was perhaps the third time I’d heard him talking about the man like that. “You really don’t like your dad, do you?”

Billy sighed, placed his can onto his bedside table, and rolled up his sleeve. “Would you like someone who did this to you?”

My eyes went wide. Resting on his forearm was a tiny little circle of raw skin. It was the size of a cigarette butt. Suddenly, it all came together. Oh, my God! “Wh—?”

“A little over a year ago,” he said as casually as he would describe the weather. “He caught me with another guy back in California, so he snuffed out his cigarette into my arm after a good beating, like it was the cherry on top. After that, he had us move here so I’d get away from ‘the lifestyle.’ His words, not mine."

"That's awful!"

"Yeah, but it's better than military school.” 

"Military school?"

"Yep. One more slip up and it's to the army with me. He thinks it'll straighten me out, but I kinda doubt it."

I tried to imagine Billy in a military uniform, but all I could picture was a sad little boy who would rather be playing with his pet rat while laying on his mountain of books.

“You know,” he said softly. “You don’t have to look at me like that.”

“Like what?”

“Like I’m some charity case.”

I shook my head. “That’s not what I was thinking.”

“What _are_ you thinking, then?”

I couldn’t find my words. There seemed to be a whole mess of them so cluttered up in my head that they couldn’t even struggle through to find the tip of my tongue. All I could do was place my can of stout on the bedside table next to his, cradle his face in my hands, and kiss him. I wasn’t expecting him to kiss me back. 

Since I’d only ever kissed girls before, I wasn’t sure what to expect from kissing a guy. I was used to soft lips and shy tongues. Billy’s lips were dry and his tongue didn’t hesitate to lick into my mouth. When we sank into the bed, my body covering his, I thought of what I liked when I was with a girl in this way and wondered if he liked the same. I liked having my neck kissed. Would he like it? I tried and he did. I also liked the occasional bite here and there. Would he like that, too? I tried and he didn’t. Eventually, I continued to experiment with him. He never once complained. I fumbled to open his shirt, kissing my way down his broad chest and reaching my hand between his legs. 

He was just as hard as I was.

“Ahem!”

Billy’s lips tore away from mine when he turned to look behind him. My own smile fell with his when I looked over him. Max was at the door with her arms crossed and she looked like she was trying her damndest not to smile.

“Neil called,” she told her brother. “He says he should be home soon, so you might wanna take your boyfriend home before he does.”

Billy groaned. So did I, but I was surprised he didn’t insist that I wasn’t his boyfriend. “Fine,” he growled. “Steve, I’ll drive you home.”

Max nodded. “Button your shirt up while you’re at it.”

Billy’s face was a new shade of scarlet when he did as he was told. His hands were shaking, making the pendant hanging from his neck tremble in turn. My own face was feeling warm when I looked down at my pants. Boy scouts could have set up camp in that tent. I held my breath, feeling my shoulders shake. When I looked up, I could see him doing the same. Before long, we had both burst out laughing. My sides were already beginning to hurt. “So much for studying,” I chortled, to which Billy laughed even harder and had to wipe away a tear. 

It took us five minutes for the laughter to die down. Once I had managed to catch my breath and find my balance, I sat up and followed him to the door, where his Camaro was waiting for us. 

The drive home was surprisingly quiet. I kept waiting for Billy to say something, anything. Perhaps I could have said something to break the awkward silence, but nothing came to my head. He stopped right in front of my house and nothing came out of my mouth. What could I say? “Thanks for having me over.”

Billy only smiled and hummed. “Hmm.”

“Your sister seems pretty cool.”

“Hmm.”

“Oscar’s pretty cute, too.”

“Hmm.”

“I really had a good time with you, especially…you know.”

His grip on the wheel tightened and I could see his knuckles turning white. I knew that I’d hit a nerve with him. Oh, shit! Was I that bad? Did he not want me to kiss him? Should I not have groped him? 

“Me too,” he finally said. “Actually…” He shook his head and sighed. 

I frowned. “What?”

“Nothing, forget it.”

“C’mon, you can tell me.”

Billy sighed heavily. “I just wanted to say, uh…thanks.”

“For what?”

“For being, you know, being a good friend.”

I had to smile. “That’s the third time you've called me that tonight.”

“Is it?”

“Yeah, it is. Although, considering the circumstances, I think we can call each other a little more than that now.”

Billy’s face went red and I could see him suppressing a smile. He even laughed a little before he kissed me goodnight. 

We agreed to meet again for dinner and a movie the following Sunday. After that, we would drive to the quarry and who knew where it would take us then? With one last kiss, I waved goodbye and saw that he was still smiling, even as the Camaro drove out of sight. I imagined him mentally skipping or dancing on his way home. I know I did.

As soon as I hit the bed, the tie-tyed teddy bear locked in my arms, I couldn’t help but wonder what else I didn’t know about Billy. What was his life like before he moved to Hawkins? Did he have lots of friends in California? How did he spend his weekends? Who was his first love? What was his first time like? When did he first have his heart broken? 

That’s when it hit me. “Oh, shit! I think I like him.”


	5. Gimme Shelter

“Wait, he _kissed_ you?”

“Actually,” I said. _“I_ kissed _him.”_

Tommy and Carol were cackling, but I’d be lying if I didn’t say that I still couldn’t believe it myself. I kissed him. I kissed Billy. I, Steve Harrington, kissed Billy Hargrove. That fact, alone, was hard to believe. Guys only ever kissed other guys if they were playing gay chicken, but I kissed him because I wanted to. Even more unbelievable was the fact that I liked it. I kissed him and I liked it. 

“Wow,” Tommy chuckled, wiping away a tear. “You’re a braver man than I thought, Harrington. I salute you. How were you not puking afterwards?”

“It wasn’t that bad,” I told him. “It was just a kiss.” _Well, not just_ any _kiss._

“Yeah,” Carol chimed in. “But it was a kiss with another guy.”

I shrugged. “Yeah, so?”

“So, wasn’t it gross?”

“Not really, it was actually kinda…”

Tommy and Carol stopped laughing instantly. They were dead silent as they waited for me to say it. _Don’t say it._

“Kind of what, Steve?” Tommy urged. “Kind of nice?”

I said nothing. Suddenly, my own two feet seemed a fascinating distraction. 

“Kind of felt good? Kind of left you hot under the collar?”

My shoes were starting to look worn and grass-stained. I made a mental note to fix that.

“Kind of…falling for the guy?”

I thought then of putting my feet to good use and going for a walk. Yes, that would make things better. I was already feeling better as I took my first steps. Things were a lot more quiet without Tommy and Carol bickering in my ear. It felt nice. Once their voices had faded into the distance, I just kept walking, enjoying the fresh air. I think I even skipped at some point. 

I didn’t even mind passing by Nancy and Jonathan.

“Hey, Romeo!” I heard Robin’s voice chime in their place “I take it the apology worked?”

“How could you tell?”

“I have my ways. Besides, you look happy.”

I imagined a neon halo hovering above my head. Walking by her side, I saw Billy resting on the hood of his Camaro with a book in hand. Already, I was grinning from ear to ear, as we shared a secret wink. “Maybe I am.”

* * *

For some reason, I was still talking to Robin when I saw it. I don’t remember much of the conversation, other than how much I gushed about Billy even as I resisted the urge to say his name out loud. The most I remember was how refreshing it felt to talk to someone who wanted to talk to me and not King Steve. Still, I saw it. Boy, did I see it. It was on the hallway walls, staring me in the face, and I couldn’t bring myself to look away from it. I don’t think I would even if I wanted to.

_Hawkins 1985 Annual Essay Competition_

_First Prize: Scholarship for university of student’s choice, courtesy of Principal J. Hopper_

There were other things written on the poster, along with a list of names written next to the pen hanging from a string, but I paid them no mind. I didn’t even notice Robin repeatedly calling my name until she waved a hand over my face.

“Harrington,” she called. “Earth to Harrington! Come in, Harrington!”

“What was that?”

“I said: were you thinking of entering?” She pointed to the poster. “The due date’s in, like, three weeks.”

A lightbulb was hovering above my head. I ran, ignoring Robin’s calls. I kept running as fast as I could and was fresh out of breath by the time I found Billy, who was still resting on the hood of his Camaro with a cigarette in one hand and a book in the other. _The Great Gatsby,_ this time. 

“Billy,” I called, my voice now as weak as my knees. “You’ll…never…bel–oh, cramp!”

Billy laid a hand on my shoulder as I panted, wheezed, and coughed. “Breathe, Stevie, breathe! Where’s the fire?”

“No fire,” I said, once I had finally managed to catch my breath. “You gotta see this.”

Without thinking, I grabbed his hand. He just barely managed to get one last drag of his cigarette before I lead him back to the poster. To my surprise, Robin was still there, arms crossed.

“Excuse me, Robin,” she mocked. “I have somewhere to be, Robin. See you later, Robin.”

“Sorry, Robin,” I said to her. “I know I got a little excited, but I just couldn’t wait. Billy, do you see that?”

Billy only shrugged. “What about it?”

 _“Hawkins 1985 Annual Essay Competition,”_ I read out loud. “The first prize is a scholarship for the university of your choice.”

“So?”

 _“So,_ you should enter!”

Billy furrowed his brow, shook his head, and laughed. “Are you on something, man?”

“I was wondering the same thing,” Robin chimed in. “Have you been smoking up, Harrington?”

“Don’t think so. We’d smell it on him if it were. Could be speed.”

“Or crack.”

“Or E.”

“Or H.”

“Shut up!” I snapped. “I’m not high!”

“Are you sure, Harrington?” Billy asked. “‘Cause you’d have to be on something to think anyone would win something like _that.”_

 _“You_ could. You’ve written half the essays in this school!”

For a moment, Billy looked as if he was about to punch me in the face, until Robin chimed in again. “Wait,” she looked to him, then me, then back to him again. “That’s _you?”_

“Thanks, Harrington.”

 _“You’re_ the guy who’s been writing everyone’s essays?”

Billy rolled his eyes and turned to Robin. “It was supposed to be a secret.” 

“Then you kinda suck at keeping secrets ‘cause everyone’s been talking about someone writing people’s shit for money.”

“Jesus, does everyone know everything about me now?”

“Well, not everyone. No one ever said it was you. Actually, I’m kind of impressed.”

Billy’s eyes were now big and bright. “Seriously?”

“Yeah, I caught a glimpse of that _Jane Eyre_ thing you did for Dwayne Wirth. Probably should have known it wasn’t him. I mean, the guy thought Mr. Rochester’s dog, Pilot, was an _actual_ pilot.” 

“You’ve read _Jane Eyre?”_

“And the rest, cover to cover.”

“What about _The Tenant of Wildfell Hall?”_

 _“So_ underrated!”

“Right?”

“Guys!” I snapped again. “Focus! Billy, you really should enter this competition.”

Billy paused a moment, looking like he was thinking hard until he gave a quick: “No.”

“C’mon! You have to!”

“And why do I _have_ to?”

“Don’t you get it? If you were to enter the competition and win the scholarship, you wouldn’t _have_ to write other peoples’ essays for money. Hell, you could even use the rest of the money to move out and find an apartment and still afford to go to uni.” 

Billy clicked his tongue and nodded. “Okay,” he said. “Let’s say I _do_ enter this contest thingy, along with the several other names on that list. What happens if I _don’t_ win?”

I bit my lip, thinking hard. _I’ll pay for your tuition myself. I’ll adopt another little critter for Oscar to play with. I’ll love you forever…wait, love?_

“I’ll go to prom with you,” I began. “Wearing a rainbow suit.” 

Billy’s eyes were wide. Robin’s jaw dropped. The two simply stared at me as if I’d just grown six more eyes and four more limbs. If I could have, I would have taken the words that had just fallen from my mouth and swallowed them back up. 

“Okay.”

It was my turn to widen my eyes. I was just joking. Well, half-joking, but it wasn’t like I was expecting that to work. “Really?”

“Yeah,” Billy said with a simple shrug. “You’d look good in rainbows.”

With that, Billy passed by me, picked up the pen at the end of the string, and added his name to the long list. I could have hugged him. I could have kissed him. I could have done both at once. Instead, I gripped his shoulders and said in his ear: “You won’t regret this, Hargrove.”

“You better not make me regret this, Harrington.”

God, I really wanted to kiss him then.

At the corner of my eye, I could see Robin smiling at us. “You guys are cute together.”

I wish I didn't blush so easily. “Oh, we’re not…”

But before I could say too much, I felt a strong arm wrapped around my shoulders and a hard hand pinching my cheek. “Yeah, we are,” Billy said. “Aren’t we, pretty boy?”

I forced myself to laugh when he kissed my cheek, trying to look as disgusted as possible when I was still resisting the urge to kiss him back.

Robin rolled her eyes. “God, get a room!”

“We might do just that,” Billy grinned, his eyes twinkling. “We’ll send you a tape of it while were at it.”

“Gross,” Robin chuckled. “Excuse me, I have to get to Spanish class before I throw up.”

As Robin walked away, I felt Billy dragging me just as I had dragged him earlier. Before I knew it, were in a janitor’s closet and his mouth was on mine. Finally, I could kiss him! 

“Nice save,” I said between kisses. “I’m surprised you didn't start making out with me back there.”

“Believe me, the temptation was there.”

I could see that. Hell, I could _feel_ it. Billy’s hands were all over me and his lips were trailing their way down my neck. My jeans suddenly felt tighter and I was certain Billy’s did, too. His hands were all over me and I began to lose myself. As if it had a mind of its own, my hand snuck its way down, gripping his ass hard enough to make him yelp. I didn’t think he’d turn so red. 

Swallowing hard, the question just spilled out of my mouth: “Do you wanna come over tonight?”

He seemed startled. “Seriously?”

“Yeah. My mom’s working a night shift and my dad’s in New York. We could grab a bite to eat, have a couple of drinks and maybe…”

I couldn’t find the words. What words do you use when you tell another guy that you want to take it to the next level? Girls like it when you use flowery words or cheeky euphemisms. Guys were more physical, or at least _I_ was. With that thought in mind, I gripped his cheek even harder, holding him close enough to grind my hips against his. For a moment, he seemed lost to himself and I heard shudder escape his kiss-swollen lips. I think I even heard a moan.

“What do you say?”

“You,” his voice broke until he cleared his throat. “You, uh…you really want to?”

I nodded because I did. I really did. 

“O-okay, um, what time?”

He looked nervous. Why? What did he have to be so nervous about? I shook my head of it. “Is six good for you?”

I took his next seven or eight kisses as a yes. 

* * *

I don’t know how long I waited for my mom to leave for work. She was usually so punctual as to leave at least an hour before her shift at the hospital, which wasn’t far from here, but tonight she seemed to take her sweet time. “Shouldn’t you be heading to work?” I kept asking, which was always met with: “I am. I’ll be out in five minutes.” Five minutes turned to ten, then fifteen, then twenty.

Finally, she was at the door. She must have heard me heaving a sigh of relief. “You seem pretty eager to get rid of me,” she said. “Is there something I should know?”

I shook my head. “No, I just uh…I have a lot of homework to do and I work better when it’s nice and quiet, you know?”

My mother raised a well-plucked eyebrow. “If you say so.” Finally, she was gone. 

Instantly, I rushed to the kitchen in search of something—anything—that would make a halfway decent meal. Pasta, that was easy, but what would I use for sauce? There was tomato sauce, that would work, and olives, capers, anchovies. Puttanesca it was! If there was one thing I was grateful for about being left alone so often, it at least gave me the opportunity to learn how to cook. There was some wine on the rack, too, several bottles worth of it. Hopefully, the folks wouldn’t mind if I took one. Finally, dinner was made and the table was set. Now, all I had to do was put on the right outfit because no way in hell was I going to swoon a guy like Billy Hargrove wearing a Wham! t-shirt. I don’t know how many outfits I tried on before I found the right one: jeans just tight enough to flaunt what I had and an equally fitted shirt three buttons open. An outfit that said: “I’ll have your son home before nine, but he won’t come home unsullied.”

That’s when I really started to think about it. Stupidly enough, I didn’t, at first. I had invited Billy in the hopes of sex when, really, I had no idea how to have sex with another guy. I wasn’t a virgin. Emily from summer camp had seen to that when I was sixteen. After her, there was Charlotte, Annie, Janet, Katie, and the list went on. Nancy, I’d hoped to make love to for the rest of my life, once upon a time. That hope seemed a distant memory to me now. Billy was another story entirely. Usually, when I was in bed with a girl, I’d kiss her all over, maybe go down on her for a while, and fuck her. Was I supposed to do that to Billy or was he supposed to do that to me? How would he do that to me? How would I do that to him? How did guys have sex with each other? 

_Billy would know,_ I thought. _I’ll ask him…when he gets here._

It was seven o’clock sharp when I had finished making dinner and setting the table. I held my breath in hopes to hear the doorbell ring, but heard nothing. Five minutes passed and I thought to myself: _Maybe he’s just a little late._ Then ten minutes passed. _Well, it is raining, so he’s probably having trouble with traffic._ Then fifteen minutes passed. _Man, I’m hungry. He won’t mind if I have a little bite._ Then twenty minutes passed. _You missed out, Billy, that was a good meal._ Half an hour passed. _Come on, Billy!_ One hour passed. _He’s not coming, is he?_

Finally, cursing myself for all this work I’d put into for nothing, I blew out the candles. I didn’t bother to put everything else away and instead drank a glass of my mother’s wine in less than a gulp.

_Fuck this!_

Eventually, I fell onto the couch with the bottle in hand. I didn’t know when I fell asleep, but I woke up to the sound of banging. At first, I thought it was the thunder coming from outside, but it wouldn’t stop and I was pretty sure there wasn’t any thunder downstairs. Someone was at the door and they weren’t going anywhere. I looked to the alarm clock on my bedside table and growled as I dragged myself onto my feet. Who the hell was knocking on the door in the middle of the night? 

“Alright,” I called to whoever wouldn’t stop knocking. “Don’t cream your pants. It’s not like some of us have to sleep on a school night or—Billy?”

Billy stood with his jacket clutched to his chest, practically shaking in his boots. His eyes were red from what I couldn’t tell were freshly shed tears or the pouring rain. There was something dark hiding behind his rain-soaked curls, which now looked more brown than blond, but it was too dark for me to tell what it was.

“H-hey,” his voice shook. “Your folks still aren’t home, right?”

“Um, no. Where were you? I thought you’d…”

“Can we come in?”

“We?” Billy looked down. The jacket that he had clutched to his chest began to squeak and move until a little grey head popped up to the surface. “Oscar?” 

“Can we?” he was practically begging. “Please?”

“Uh, yeah, but what are you doing here? It’s past midnight and you should have been here…”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know, but can we take the lecture inside, where it’s warm?”

“Oh, yeah!” I opened the door for him and he staggered in, staring at his surroundings as if he’d never seen it before. I didn’t know why. He was there when I threw that party all those weeks ago. “Billy, what are you doing here?”

“I’m sorry,” he choked. “IknowitslateandIknowIshouldhavebeen…”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa! Calm down, man. Breathe.”

He did. In through the nose and out through the mouth. At least I had learned something from my mom that I was grateful for.

“Billy,” I said calmly. “What happened?”

“Neil and I had a fight.”

Neil. I recognized that name. Billy never called his father by his own name like other kids did. I wasn’t entirely sure why until I took a closer look. I stepped closer towards him and moved the curls away from his forehead, where a dark patch of black and blue was hiding. In the centre was an angry patch of red. 

“Jesus,” I could have killed that son of a bitch, but kept my cool. Billy didn’t need to see me as angry as I was. “I think the bleeding’s stopped already. Let’s get it cleaned up.”

I lead him into the kitchen, where I knew my mom’s First Aid Kid was somewhere, hidden under the sink. Billy managed to find a jar of peanut butter for Oscar to enjoy while I cleaned the wound.

“This might sting a little,” I warned him. 

He hissed at the first touch of iodine. “Stings like a bitch, actually.”

“I know. Just try to think of something else; something nice.”

He bit his lip, at first, hard. Slowly, his face softened and I had to ask: “What are you thinking about?”

“Pacific Beach,” he said with the slightest hint of a smile. “Hanging out on the boardwalk, sneaking into the fair, surfing with my mom on weekends.”

“What was her name?”

“Rose.”

“That’s pretty.”

“She was.”

We managed to share a smile until Billy looked to the nearby dinner table, which was still set with now burnt out candles and empty plates. “Oh, shit,” he muttered. “When you invited me over, I didn’t think you’d…”

“Oh,” I shook my head. “It’s okay.”

“No, it’s not. I mean, if I knew you’d put in that much effort, I’d have run here faster.”

That startled me. “Wait, you _walked_ here?”

“Neil took my car keys,” he explained. “I told him I was going out and he didn’t like that, so he took my keys, I tried to get ‘em back and…well, this happened.” He pointed to the wound that I was now disinfecting. “Bastard tried to get at Oscar, too, but he ran off like a shot; didn’t ya, buddy?”

Oscar squeaked proudly in response, making Billy laugh at least a little, if not weakly. I tried to smile, but was secretly biting my tongue to keep from shouting out every horrible name that I could have called Neil Hargrove, whoever he was. Hell, I’d never even met him and I hated him. I wanted to kill the son of a bitch. To think, all the times I’d called my dad an asshole, meanwhile his was beating his own son to a pulp. 

Finally, I found a bandage to cover the wound. Already, he was looking good as new. “There,” I said. “All done.”

“Thanks,” he said with the saddest smile I’d ever seen.

“Are you hungry? ‘Cause there’s still some food left, if you are. It’s probably cold now, but…”

“It’s okay. We should probably get going. I just wanted to see you after what happened.”

“You could stay here.”

Billy’s eyes were now as wide as the plates on the table. “Steve, you don’t have to.”

“No, but I want to.”

He thought a moment and then looked down to the little rat that was now cuddled in his arms. “What do you think, Oscar?” he asked. “Just for the night?”

Oscar squeaked happily. 

“I guess that’s a yes. Mind if I use your phone?”

I shook my head and pointed to the phone in the hallway. Passing by him, I rushed to tidy what I could of my room. Damn, all that fuss over a date and I didn’t bother to clean my room? I was hitting myself until I was able to hide the clutter under my bed. Heading back downstairs, I could hear Billy talking on the phone.

“Hey, Max, it’s me. I know, I know, but I’m fine. I’m at Steve’s place. Yes, Oscar’s with me, too. Hey, kiddo, don’t cry. You’ll shrink your PJs. Yeah, he’s letting me stay. Just tell Neil I’m with a girl, okay? I dunno, call her…Steph.” He smiled weakly and laughed a little. “I know. Genius, right? Now get some sleep. You got that test tomorrow, remember? I love you, too, shitbird.”

I could see his best attempt at a smile fall flat when he hung up the phone. Oscar stood from his embrace and nibbled at his owner’s chin, as if to kiss him better. This, at least, seemed to bring a real smile to Billy’s face. I couldn’t help but admire him at that moment. This guy faced every asshole in school as well as the asshole he had for a father and still talked to a girl he wasn’t even related to and held such a tiny creature with a tenderness that I don’t think I’d ever seen in anyone. He loved his step-sister enough to fake a smile for her when he looked like he was about to cry and he looked to that rat as if it were his only friend. How could anyone hold so much love in their heart and receive so little in return?

That was the moment I knew that I was falling for him.

As soon as Billy took his first steps upstairs, I rushed back into my room. Billy stepped in with Oscar in his arms.

“Got a bed for this little guy?” he asked.

I nodded and opened up a drawer, where I made a pile of socks into a nest for the little rodent. I felt like a dad tucking his child in before bedtime. I could have kissed him goodnight.

Billy was sitting on my bed when I turned to face him. He looked strangely lost. 

“Are you okay?” I asked, sitting by his side.

“Yeah,” he lied. “I’m just wondering why you’ve been so nice to me these past few weeks, especially tonight. Everyone else would have just shrugged me off or pushed me away.”

My smile was just as weak as his, as I laid a hand on his cheek. “I’m not everyone else.”

Soon, his smile grew stronger and I kissed him then and there. His kiss was more chaste than the last and strangely shy. Lips made way for tongues, hands reached for skin, and before too long I was on top of him. I didn’t want to stop. I could have kept kissing him forever if I wanted to and, boy, did I want to! My hips seemed to roll themselves against his until I felt his hand slap them away. “Wait.”

“What is it?” I asked, nearly panicking. “Is something wrong?”

“No, this is great. It’s just…if we’re gonna go any further, I think I need to tell you something.”

I sat up. He sat up. Oh, God! Was he about to tell me that he really did catch AIDS from a drag queen or bear or whatever? 

“The other day,” he started with a deep breath. “At my place, when you kissed me and we almost…you know.”

I nodded. I did know. I wanted it.

“Well, that was…I mean, it would have…Jesus Christ, why can’t I say it? Okay, if Max hadn’t interrupted us and we went any further…”

_We would have had sex and you would have shown me how. You would have shown me where to touch you and how. I would have learned how to make you feel good. It would have been wonderful._

“…it would have been my first time.”

The room was suddenly silent. My eyes were suddenly so wide they may well have popped out of my skull. I couldn’t believe it. “Y-you…you’re a _virgin?”_

Billy faked another laugh. “If that’s what you crazy kids are calling it these days, then yes, I am.”

“But you told me your dad caught you with another guy.”

He shook his head. “He saw me kissing him. It never got any further than that.”

“So, all those other stories…”

“They’re just stories.”

I probably should have known. Not that he was a virgin, but that all those ridiculous rumours were just that. Still, I kept staring at him. For a moment he looked scared.

“Are you shocked?”

I shook my head. “No. I mean, maybe just a little. I mean, you don’t exactly seem the type to wait until your wedding night, you know?”

Billy snickered. “That wasn’t exactly the case. I _have_ had the chance a few times, I guess I just never took it.”

“Why not?”

“‘Cause I never really cared for any of them as much.”

Again, my eyes went wide. “As much as…?”

Billy didn’t answer. He didn’t have to. All he had to do was bite his lip and my mouth was on him again. His lips seemed to pull me back down to the bed and I knew immediately how tonight was going to end. Our hands, though shaking like leaves, were somehow everywhere at once; tugging at the hairs that stood on end, scratching at what bare skin could be found, reaching between parted legs for the rigid parts of us that begged to be released. 

Our hands were still shaking as we frantically stripped layer after layer of clothing until there was nothing left between us but skin. I had never seen Billy looking more vulnerable than when he was naked and hard underneath me. God, he was beautiful!

I didn’t know what to do. Neither of us did, so the best we could do was teach each other. Billy was the first to take my hand and guide it between his legs, showing me how to touch him, which seemed no different from touching myself. That was enough to have him purring like a cat being stroked. Still, I wanted more. Kissing my way down his broad chest, I was soon between his legs, finding that he was bigger than me and I had no idea how that part of him was going to fit, but that didn’t stop me. 

“Oh, God!” he cried out as soon as I had my mouth wrapped around him. He tasted strange and I almost choked on the hard flesh when it nudged the back of my throat. I wondered how girls were able to do this. One girl I had been with in the past was able to take me to the hilt when she was sucking me off. I tried with him, hoping he’d be impressed, but I only ended up gagging and coughing. Still, he didn’t complain and for that, I kept going. I wanted to keep going.

But I didn’t want him to come yet. I knew how easy it was for a guy to come his first time around. I came before I was even inside one girl and I didn’t want that for Billy.

“Wait here,” I told him and rushed down to the kitchen, not caring that I was still naked and hard. Billy laughed when I came back.

“Crisco?” he chuckled. “What’s that for?”

“For you. It’s supposed to make it easier.”

I didn’t have to tell him what “it” was. With a soft smile, he lay back, welcoming me back between his legs. With the shortening melting between my fingers, I stopped the moment I touched the wrinkled skin between his cheeks. Maybe I should have been disgusted by what I was about to do, but I was too turned on by the way Billy was moaning.

“Can I?” I asked. Billy nodded frantically and gasped when the first finger breached him. His body was tense for a full three minutes before he became adjusted to the feeling. The second came in more easily and he wasn’t complaining when I experimented. Once the third was in, I began to move, searching inside him until something—I didn’t know what—made him cry out. Oh, _that_ was a sound I wasn’t going to grow tired of any time soon. 

Billy stopped me and, for a moment, I thought that was it. “Do you have anything?”

 _Oh!_ “Yeah, er…in my bedside table.”

He was quick to open a drawer and find a little foil square. As I sheathed and slicked myself, I kept thinking: _This is it. This is it. This is it._ Somehow, I ended up on my back. Billy was straddling me and I wondered how many birds took flight at the sound he made once I was inside him. We stayed still a moment, taking in the new feeling of rock-hard skin in a tight hole. God, was he tight! Tighter than any girl I’d ever been with. Before too long, he began to move, slowly at first, but then he picked up the pace until he was riding me as if his life depended on it. He held my hands the whole time. 

We held each other so close when it was over. I stayed inside him for some time until I went soft and we both laughed at how strange that feeling was when I slipped out.

Billy was still laughing when I held him at my side. He was grinning like an idiot and I couldn’t help but smile back, knowing that I had made him feel good. Not bad, for a first try. 

“That was,” he chuckled. “Fuck, that was…”

“New.”

He looked dazed when he looked up at me. “Not exactly the word I was looking for.”

“What were you looking for, then?”

Billy didn’t answer. He just kissed me and then he kept kissing me. I couldn’t stop kissing him back. 

I didn’t remember falling asleep. All I remembered was waking up to the sleeping boy next to me looking like a happy kitten, all huddled up to me and softly snoring. He even smiled a little when I stroked his dirty blond curls and gently kissed the bandaged wound on his forehead.

I was happy and I didn’t care that it was because I had a boy—Billy Hargrove, of all boys—in my bed. Because who cares what makes you happy, as long as it does?


	6. Trouble in Paradise

Billy was still asleep when I woke up. He looked so peaceful, even with the bandage on his forehead, and I don’t think I’d seen him look so at peace before or since. Eventually, his eyes started to flutter open and he woke up with a smile on his face. 

“Good morning,” I said softly.

“G’morning,” he mumbled with a stretch, not even bothering to cover his naked body. “Sleep well?”

“Like a baby. How’s your head?”

“I’ve never had any complaints.”

I snickered. “That’s because you were a virgin before now.”

“Exactly, so I’ve never had anyone to _make_ any complaints.”

We both laughed until our lips met. It didn’t take long before I was licking into his mouth and moving to hover over him. I easily lost myself in the way he kissed me as if he was hungry for me, the way his body felt underneath me, the way his hands snuck their way down. Already, we were both hard with morning wood and grinding against each other like bitches in heat. As I licked into his mouth and he gripped my ass, I found myself mentally begging: _Please, please, please!_

“Steve?” Billy and I both froze in an instant. That wasn’t his voice and for as much of a prick as I was back then, I wasn’t so much of a prick to call out my own name during sex. “Honey, you still here?”

“Is that your mom?” Billy asked, his voice hushed. I nodded. “Um, where’s Oscar?”

I turned to look at the bed I’d made for the little rat, only to find it empty. _Shit!_

I was practically flying off Billy, scrambling to dress myself and hoping to every god and goddess that I had ever heard of that my mom wouldn’t notice the raging hard-on under my PJs. I stopped myself when I reached the stairs, reminding myself to act normal; like I hadn't just slept with another dude, like said dude may or may not have been my boyfriend, like I wasn’t a sexually confused asshole without an agenda, like there wasn’t a rat running around the house. 

“Morning, mom,” I said with an exaggerated yawn. “How was work?”

She knit her brow. “Honey, you never ask how work was. Are you feeling well?”

“I’m fine. Can’t a guy ask his mother…?”

I stopped, spotting Oscar scurrying his way into the cupboard, no doubt hungry for more peanut butter. 

_Think of something!_ _Think of something fast! Think of something before your mother finds out there’s a rat in the cupboard!_ “D’you want some coffee, mom?” 

“Actually, I was going to have some tea and head to bed, it’s been…”

 _“I’ll_ make you some tea!”

Before she could so much as open her mouth to protest, I practically forced her onto a nearby chair, facing away from me as I rummaged through the cupboard. There was certainly a box of teabags, but no rat. _Where are you, you little shit?_

“Excuse me?”

 _Shit, did I say that out loud?_ “Nothing! Just looking for that tea. That goddamn tea.”

“Language, Steven! You know, I really hope no one in Harvard hears you talking like that.”

I rolled my eyes. 

“Did you just roll your eyes at me?”

“No,” I lied. “Why don’t you just put your feet up, read a magazine, while I make you some tea?”

“I can help,” said a deeper voice coming from upstairs. Much to my chagrin, there was Billy Hargrove himself wearing nothing but a pair of jeans and the most delightful shit-eating grin I’d ever seen. “Morning!”

My mother looked at Billy with wide eyes. I couldn’t blame her. Billy knew how good he looked and seemed more than willing to exploit it. Why he felt the need to actually hold a shirt in his hands, I wasn’t sure, least of all if his idea was to parade around my house half-naked in front of my own mother. 

I cleared my throat. “Um, mom, this is my…uh, this is Billy.”

“William,” Billy corrected with his brightest smile. “William Hargrove. Nice to meet you.”

“Likewise,” she said, looking back and forth between him and I. “May I ask…?”

“What I’m doing here? Certainly! I took a nasty fall down the road and couldn’t find my way home. I haven’t lived here for very long, you see, so I don’t really know my way around Hawkins. As luck would have it, Steve found me in my time of need and gave me a place to stay for the night. Patched me up, too.”

My mother eyed the bandage on Billy’s brow. “Not very well, I’d say. Steve, honey, grab me the first aid kit.”

There was no “please” and I wasn’t expecting a “thank you,” but I did as I was told. Reaching under the sink, I felt something fat and furry and something else slim and scaly. Oscar! In a snap, I reached for him, only to have him slip from between my fingers. Damn, that little rascal was fast! 

Oscar scurried out from under the sink and I felt my stomach tighten when he stopped at my mother’s feet. _Shit!_ I was in trouble. _Shit!_ There went my next month of freedom. _Shit!_ I could already hear my mother screaming. _Shit! Shit! Shit!_

Then, suddenly, Oscar was gone. In his place was a shirt on the floor. Billy picked up his shirt and clutched it to his chest. Hopefully, I was the only one who could see Oscar’s tail poking through the fabric.

“Whoops,” he said, smiling easily. “Don’t wanna lose that.”

I could have kissed Billy then and there. Hell, I would have done more than that if I could. Were we alone, I would have grabbed him by the scruff of his neck, made love to him over and over until he was all dried out. For now, I would have to wait until my mother was out of sight.

“Aren’t you going to put in on?” asked my mother.

Billy looked down at himself, clearly doing his best to hide the squirming rat in his shirt, then back at me. “I’m good, thanks.”

“Actually, Billy, that shirt’s looking a little dirty. Mind if I take it from you? You can borrow one of my own.”

“Thanks.”

I threw the first aid kit on the table between them and took the shirt in my hands, trying desperately to keep that damned rat still, as I sprinted my way back upstairs. Finally, I was in my room and was able to free the little rascal, though not without a sharp nip at my hand.

“Ow!” I piped, dropping Oscar to the ground. “I damn near saved your live and that’s the thanks I get, you little shit?”

Oscar squeaked angrily at me. I imagined him ranting at the gall I had for taking him away from the peanut butter. Sighing, I picked him back up and scratched him behind the ears. That, at least, calmed him down. 

“I know,” I mumbled. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to yell at you like that. I just didn’t want my mom to catch you and squish you like a bug because I _know_ she would. I don't think your daddy would be too happy about that, if I’m honest.”

Honest. That was a word that stopped me in my tracks. _If I’m honest…if I were honest, I wouldn’t be in this position._

“Can I be honest with you, Oscar?” Oscar simply stared. “Yeah, of course, I can. It’s not like you’re gonna tell anyone, is it? The truth is that I’m a big fat fraud. I only asked your daddy out because I wanted to bring him down. Pretty dumb, huh? But you wanna know what’s even dumber? I wanted to bring him down so I could put myself back up.”

I imagined his simple squeaks being his way of telling me off.

“Yeah, I know. I’m a selfish asshole and I don’t deserve him.”

That was when the little rascal bit me again.

“Ow! You don’t have to agree with me, you know!”

He squeaked again, which I took for an apology. 

“The thing is,” I continued. “I started this over something so stupid and I didn’t think I’d…”

I couldn’t say it, even to him. Jesus, how pathetic was that? I couldn’t even confess to a fucking rat that I was falling for a guy. The fact that the guy just so happened to be Billy Hargrove didn’t make it any easier. Especially when I considered what I was doing to him. 

_Don’t tell him,_ said the devil on my shoulder. _He doesn’t have to know. Just tell Tommy and Carol that the deal is off and you can keep going out with Billy. All you have to do is make sure they never tell him anything. Might be hard, but it’ll be worth it._

 _Tell him,_ said the angel on my other shoulder. _You can’t spend the rest of your life looking over you shoulder. You certainly can’t spend the rest of your life lying to someone you care about. Billy deserves to know the truth, even if it hurts him._

This sparked a heated debate between the angel and the devil. Meanwhile, I was imagining all the possible responses I would get if I did tell Billy the truth. Naturally, most of these scenarios didn’t end well. On the one hand, he could yell at me, hit me, call me all sorts of names and tell me that he never wanted to see me again. On the other hand, he could curl up into a ball in the corner, cry for hours and ask how I could do such a thing to him, to which I’d have no answer. Alternatively, he could kill me. That would probably be the easier way around it. 

“I have to tell him.” 

No sooner had thought out that loud did Billy enter the room with a fresh new bandage on his forehead. “Tell me what?”

God, I couldn’t take the way he looked at me. His eyes were wide, curious, and almost innocent. It was almost painful to look at him. The words kept rising and falling in the back of my throat and I felt like the left and right side of my brain were playing the most painful game of tug of war _._

_Tell him. Don’t tell him. Tell him. Don’t tell him. Tell him. Tell him!_

“That was my first time, too. With a guy, I mean.”

He was laughing while I was internally cursing myself. _Steve Harrington, you idiot!_

“I kinda knew that,” he said. “I’m no expert, but I think someone with more experience would have used lube instead of Crisco.”

Soon, I was laughing with him until I felt that warm hand back on my cheek. Another warm hand snuck under my t-shirt and I knew what I was in for when he whispered against my lips: “Wanna make a second time?”

I nodded because I did—God, I did—but not with my mom downstairs. “Meet me at the quarry after school?”

“It’s a date.”

* * *

It was a date, alright, one of many. We ordered Chinese, listened to AC/DC, drove to the quarry, and stayed there for hours. Billy had insatiable virgin’s lust, I could tell. The moment we stopped the car, he was on my lap, kissing me and grinding against me until we both creamed our pants. After that, we tried again. He took me in his mouth and I could tell that he was struggling just as much as I was the night before, so I guided him. He rode me soon after and came untouched. A couple more blowjobs and handjobs were exchanged before I took him in the back seat. We must have had sex several times that night and it didn’t even matter that we were both spent before midnight. 

Later that week, we went on a proper date. Billy and I met at the diner again, where we shared a milkshake and fries. On the surface, we looked like any other two guys hanging out, but you only had to look under the table to see his foot grazing mine. Later, we went to the movies. _The Breakfast Club_ was playing, but we weren’t paying much attention to the film. Instead, we took advantage of the empty theatre and spent the first part of the movie holding hands, the second part groping each other, and the third part kissing the life out of each other. We were both hard as rocks by the time the movie was over and we drove to the quarry where we had sex again and again and again. 

Sometimes, though rarely, there were even days when we didn’t fool around. Billy soon found a way to sneak into my room at night. When he did, he would usually sport a new cut or bruise from his dad, complete with bright red eyes that were still fresh with tears. On those nights, I would just hold him until we both fell asleep. 

Other times, I would visit him so that we could “study,” which usually meant playing with Oscar and sharing a few drinks over all the jokes and stories that we had to tell. Billy had thousands of stories to tell about California, some of which had Max cringing and me damn near pissing myself laughing. I never got tired of any of them. 

Once, we spent a night at the quarry, which had soon become “our place.” We didn’t do much. For the most part, we just lay down, staring at the stars. Billy told me all the constellations that he knew, though I think most of them were jokes. I didn’t care. I just liked being able to hear his voice and hold his hand. We still made love—I could hardly have called it “having sex” or “fucking” by that point—but just being near him was intimate enough for me.

I didn’t mean to fall in love with him. It just happened, like all accidents do.

* * *

There was an assembly on Monday. Billy was shaking on his way to the auditorium and I didn’t have to ask why. He’d handed in his essay for the competition a week and a half ago and had been counting the days to the results since then. Every day, it was always: “Ten days ‘till they announce the winner. Just nine more days. Eight days. Seven, six, five, four, three, two…

“One of these days, I’ll be able to handle this shit like a normal person,” he said on our way to the assembly. “My fucking hands won’t stop shaking.”

He wasn’t lying. I would have held his hands just to keep them still, but we were surrounded by teachers and classmates.

“Relax,” I told him. “You’ll get this award, Billy.”

Billy shook his head. “You don’t know that.”

“Yes, I do.”

“No, you don’t. You’re not psychic. What if…?”

“Don’t even _think_ about finishing that question.”

“God, I should never have done this.”

“Hey!” I suddenly stopped him, grabbed him by the shoulders, and forced him to look me in the eye. “Don’t be like that, okay? I told you about this competition for a reason. You are the smartest person that I know and you, above all people, deserve that scholarship. That’s how I _know_ that you’re going to win this thing and, babe, if you can’t believe that, then you’re damn right I’m gonna believe it for ya.”

Billy stared at me with wide eyes for what seemed like an eternity. For a moment, I thought it was because he believed me until he smirked and said: “Did you just call me babe?” 

My cheeks were suddenly warm. “Yeah, I guess I did.”

Billy’s smile started to widen. “Well, if you care enough about me to say that kinda shit, I guess I can pretend to believe it.”

I returned his smile and ruffled his dirty blond curls before we continued further. “Atta boy!”

“Jesus Christ, man, I’m not a dog! And watch the curls, will ya?”

“Oh no! Is curl number sixty-three out of place?”

“Try curl number sixty-nine.”

“Christ,” I murmured in hopes of no one hearing. “You take a guy’s v-card, the next thing you know, you’ve created a monster.”

“You’ve made your bed, now you gotta sleep in it.”

“I’d rather sleep with…”

“Good morning, you two!” Mrs. Byers chirped happily as we reached the door of the auditorium. She seemed strangely happy when she saw us. “Billy, I heard you’ve entered the essay competition.”

Billy bit his lip and nodded sheepishly. “Yeah, I did.”

“I’d hoped you would. Good luck!”

As Mrs. Byers turned to take her seat and we soon found ours right next to Robin, who was giving Billy the thumbs up. “Good luck, Hargrove!”

“See,” I assured him. “I’m not the only one who believes in you.”

It was Billy’s turn to blush now. “Babe, shut up.”

Once all the seats were taken and the room had silenced, all eyes were on our principal. Principal Jim Hopper was a stout and bearded man who always looked as if he’d rather be at home watching _Murder She Wrote_ with a pack of Marlboros and a bottle of Jack than tending to hundreds of teenagers. Sometimes his office would reek of cigarettes and there was always an open box of doughnuts nearby, but I only ever had to look at the picture of his daughter to tell that he did, in fact, have a heart. 

“Good morning, Hawkins,” he said into the mic with about as much enthusiasm as a bus driver during rush hour. “We’ll be starting today’s assembly with what I'm told is a special announcement. It is my pleasure to announce that the winner of this year’s annual essay competition has been decided.”

Billy held his breath. I held his hand. _This is it._

Hopper pulled an envelope from his pocket and seemed to take forever to open the damn thing. Finally, slipping out what looked to be the winning essay, he looked to be reading the first page over and over. Even from a distance, I could see his confusion.

 _It’s Billy,_ I thought. _I knew it! Bet you didn’t see that one coming, did you, Hop?_

“Uh,” the principal coughed. “The award goes to…”

_Billy Hargrove. Billy Hargrove. Billy Hargrove._

“…Thomas Hagan.”

“What?” Billy, Robin, and I all said in unison, but were drowned out by the applause. As Hopper urged Tommy onto the stage, Billy slumped in his seat, sighing heavily, as he let go of my hand and clapped slowly. Reluctantly, Robin and I joined him, though none of us showed the same joy or energy as the crowd around us. 

I couldn’t believe it. Tommy Hagan, the winner of an essay competition? Really? Tommy looked about as dumbfounded as we did, but soon smiled before the audience.

“Is Mr. He-Heathcliff a man?” he read aloud, but stumbled. “If so, is he m-m-mad? And if not, is he a devil? Isabella Lipton…sorry, Linton Heathcliff asks these questions in a letter to Nelly Dean in despair of her hasty marriage. Emily…Br-Bro-Brunt?”

“Brontë,” Billy hissed like a snake. “Bron-TAY, you uncultured swine.”

I stared at him with wide eyes and couldn’t look away. 

“Brontë,” Tommy continued to read. “Emily Brontë, too, asks this question to the reader in her novel, _Wuthering Heights,_ and the answer is simply: y-yes. Heathcliff _is_ a man; a man who, due to the corruption of his up-bringing—violence, grief, and obsession—becomes the corrupted.”

Tommy continued reading. Anything he had to say went in one ear and out the other. I kept staring at Billy and lost count of how many times he rolled his eyes or muttered something under his breath, usually mimicking Tommy’s words to a T or flat out calling him an asshole. 

That’s when I knew. Of course, I knew. How could I not know? Better yet, how couldn’t I have seen this coming? 

At the corner of my eye, I could see Mrs. Byers looking at Billy in the same way that I was.

Finally, the essay was finished. Tommy made his way through the crowd with the swagger of a movie star on the red carpet. Carol seemed to clap the loudest of everyone before the applause died down. I wanted to punch them both.

“Thank you,” Hopper said, but didn't sound at all thankful. “Moving onto a more sinister topic, prom is fast approaching…”

Before another word came out of our principal’s mouth, Billy stood, his fists clenched so tightly I could see his knuckles going white. He marched away, seething. I tried calling after him, but he was out the door before I or anyone else could stop him. I stood to follow him, but felt Robin’s hand on mine before I could even find my feet. 

“No,” she hissed. “Do you want people to start talking about you, too?”

I didn’t care. Tearing her hand away, I ran after Billy. He was nowhere to be found in the hallways, classrooms, washrooms, or even the library. I looked everywhere before I deduced that he had to have gone outside for a smoke. 

I didn’t see Tommy and Carol following me. 

Eventually, I found him outside under the bleachers, already halfway through a cigarette. 

“There you are,” I sighed in relief. “Damn, you’re fast!”

The Billy I knew would have made a clever comeback. This Billy only stared at the ground and took a drag of his now mostly burnt cigarette. 

“You okay?”

“What do you think?” he growled. “Hagan stole my prize.”

I didn’t know what to say. What could I say? _I’m sorry. This was my fault. Tommy’s an asshole!_ Well, that last one wasn’t a lie, to be fair.

“You said I’d win.”

I bit my lip. “You _did_ win.”

Billy rolled his eyes and popped the cigarette into his mouth, mumbling something that sounded like: “C’mon!”

“I mean it. That was _your_ essay up there and you know it. I know how much _Wuthering Heights_ means to you and Tommy couldn’t even pronounce the author’s name. _You_ wrote that essay, didn’t you?”

Billy smiled, as a puff of smoke passed through his lips. I don’t think I’d ever seen someone smile out of anger. “Should have seen it coming, really. You write enough for the people who pay you enough and eventually you stop caring what exactly it is you’re writing for. Maybe that was stupid of me, but like I thought that Hagan, of all people, would have the balls to use my shit to win _my_ scholarship!”

“Then you can take it back. You can tell Hop that Tommy stole your essay and that you should have won.”

“You think he’d believe me? You think anyone on the staff will believe me? You think they’ll believe that the local white trash faggot was actually smart enough to write like that?”

I wanted to say that I would. I wanted to say that Mrs. Byers would. I wanted to say that he never knew. I wish I had said anything but a simple: “Maybe.”

 _“Maybe,”_ he sneered. “That’s a good answer, _maybe_. _Maybe_ I could rat on Hill. _Maybe_ they will believe me. _Maybe_ that the local white trash faggot really is smart enough to write like that. _Maybe,_ if I’m lucky, they won’t expel me for plagiarism. _Maybe_ I won’t have to transfer to military school or spend the rest of my life in this shithole!”

Billy’s voice was getting weaker and weaker until, finally, it began to crack. His eyes were soon bright with threatening tears, but he choked them back as if they were nothing. I knew he was trying to put on a brave face and I almost hated that he was, but I also wondered if it was a face that he was used to. All I could do was hold him until he was holding me back. 

“I didn’t think this through, Billy,” I said at last. “I’m sorry.”

“You didn’t know.”

“No, I didn’t, but you deserve that scholarship.”

Stepping back, he threw his cigarette butt on the ground and snuffed it out with the heel of his boot.

“Whatever,” he shrugged. “It doesn’t matter now. Anyway, it’s my own fault. I have a feeling this won’t be the last time Hill's fucked me over.”

I didn’t think much of that at the time.

“Out of curiosity, what was your entry? Apart from his, I mean.”

Billy winced, at first, but then looked me in the eye for the first time since I found him there. Finally, a smile. It was a smile followed by a shrug, but it was still a smile. _“_ It was about the negative effects of conventional society in _Maurice.”_

“I thought you hated Forster.”

“I’ve warmed up to him.”

Finally, we were able to smile together.

“What would you do if you did win?” I had to ask. I had to know.

“I dunno,” he said with another shrug. “I’d out, for one, and get out of this hick town and never have to see my old man again. I’d move to New York, go to NYU, get me an English degree, and maybe write my own books. I could probably teach on the side, but I always wanted to write my own books.”

My smile widened when I imagined Billy becoming a writer. I knew how good he was at that. Maybe he would become a best-selling author one day. 

“I’d take Max with me,” he continued. “I’d do whatever I could to gain custody of her, so she doesn’t have to live with Neil. I’d take Oscar, too, and get him the biggest cage he can play in. I’d take you, too.”

“Me?”

“Yeah. You didn’t think I was gonna fly off to New York and leave my boyfriend behind, did you?”

My eyes went wide. “Boyfriend?”

Billy’s smile was gentle now. With one hand resting on my cheek and the other on my waist, he whispered with a smirk against my lips: “Isn’t that what you are?” 

I can never remember who kissed whom first when he asked me that question or even who was the first to move mouths or tangle tongues. All I remember was how he felt. I remember how he tasted of coffee and cigarettes and smelled of cheap cologne and old leather. I remember how warm and rough his hands were on me even when they were gentle. I remember how soft his hair was between my fingers and the way his curls bounced when I played with them. I remember how close he held me like he never wanted to let me go. 

I wish I had savoured every last moment of that kiss.

Billy broke the kiss, pressed his forehead against mine, and smile. It was a bigger smile than it had been all morning. 

“I love you.”

My eyes shot open. There were butterflies bursting in my stomach and my cheeks were suddenly red hot and already sore from smiling. Billy loved me and I loved him. 

Before I could open my mouth to say: “I love you, too.” I heard something: laughing. One laughter sharp and the other high pitched, like a pair of hyenas. 

Tommy and Carol. 

I felt my whole body tighten at the sight of him. They seemed to appear out of nowhere. Carol was wiping away her tears of laughter while Tommy was clapping his hands loud and hard. Billy only stared at them with a casual grimace. God, he didn’t know!

I wish we had run away then and there. I wish I had grabbed him by the wrist and dragged him away from them. I wish we had slipped into either his car or mine and made a run for it, never to be seen again. 

Instead, I froze. 

“I knew it,” Tommy howled. “I fucking knew it!”

Carol continued to giggle. “He really _is_ a queer!”

Billy forced a grin and pinched my cheek. “Now, Carol, that’s not a nice thing to say. He can’t help being a bit of an odd duck, can you, Steve?”

“Billy…”

“Steve!” Tommy burst before I could say another word. If my body weren’t so stiff, I would have pushed him away before he lay a hard hand on my shoulder. “King Steve, welcome back! You did it, my friend!”

“Did what?” Billy asked and there went that smile

“Lay a hand on _you_ , for one,” Carol smirked. I wanted to slap that smirk off of her when she turned to me. “I can’t believe you actually let him _kiss_ you!”

“Yeah, that was a pretty brave move. I owe you one.”

Billy was looking back and forth between Tommy and I. “Steve, what are they talking about?”

I couldn’t answer. My tongue felt heavy and my voice seemed to be lodged somewhere into the back of my throat. Even when I tried to open my mouth, nothing came out but a weak: “I…I’m sorry.”

“Sorry for what?”

“You’re pretty smart for a sissy, Hargrove,” Tommy spoke over me. “You figure it out.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Well, let me put it this way,” Tommy began, ignoring my pathetic attempt to stop him. “Say you’re at a doctor’s appointment and your doctor finds out that you have some cancerous sore somewhere in your body. You would want to know, wouldn’t you?”

“I don’t understand.”

“It’s pretty simple, _faggot.”_ The word was like a punch to the gut. “Think of this school as the human body and you as the cancerous sore.”

Billy started to turn pale. “What?”

“Aww,” Carol pouted. “Don’t look so blue. We’re doing everyone a favour.”

“What kind of favour?”

Tommy stepped closer towards Billy. “Don’t play dumb, Hargrove, you’ve heard people talking. Everyone in this school knows that the most popular kid in school is really nothing but a disgusting pudge-packing homo. We just needed to see if they were right and here we are, thanks to _King_ Steve here.”

In a moment, Billy seemed to turn into someone I barely recognized. The Billy that I knew would have come up with some clever quip on the spot. This Billy only stood there and stared at me.

“This is a joke,” he laughed but didn’t smile. “Right? Steve, you…I know you…it’s a joke.”

I wish I could have said that it was. Instead, all I could do was stand there and feel that painful swelling in the back of my throat.

“Steve?”

“I’m sorry,” I choked. “I’m so sorry, Billy!”

I could have pin-pointed that very moment that I broke his heart. Billy’s jaw clenched and his eyes were now wild and burning with fresh tears. Without another word, he stormed past all three of us in a huff, pushing us out of his way. Tommy and Carol voiced their bitter disgust from just being touched by him, I sprinted past them and chased after Billy.

“Billy!” I called after him repeatedly. “Billy!”

“Fuck off, Harrington!”

“No! Billy, please, just let me explain!”

Billy turned on his heels and stomped towards me, screaming in my face: “Explain what? That you’ve been playing me this whole time?”

“It wasn’t like that!” I reached for his hand, but he slapped it away. “Maybe it was, at first, but…”

“I knew this was a set-up, I just fucking knew it!”

“Billy, please listen to me!”

“Don’t touch me!”

But I did. I grabbed him and kissed him as deeply as I could before he pushed me away and _smack!_ For a moment, everything went black and my cheek was throbbing with a heavy handprint. Billy marched away without so much as a look back.


	7. Bully for You

Billy didn't speak to me for an entire week after that. I tried—God, I tried!—to talk to him, but any time I so much as looked at him, he’d turn me away. Part of me couldn’t blame him after what I had done. Another part of me thought it was because he was too busy taking all the shit that was thrown at him.

Hawkins High was relentless. The hallways echoed with whispers of stories that I knew weren't true. Of course, that didn’t stop anyone from talking about how Billy Hargrove had hooked up with every guy in California, fucked a second cousin called Joe, caught “the gay plague” from either a bear or a drag queen, and offered handjobs for five bucks and blowjobs for ten. Billy walked through all of them with his head held high. His steps were slower than what I was used to seeing. He usually had a spring in his step and now, as I watched him drag himself through the hallways, it was as if his feet were suddenly made of stone.

“There he is,” I heard one Carol hissing at Tommy, who was pushing her towards Billy in spite of her screams. “Tommy, what the hell?”

“Go on, babe, maybe you’ll turn him!”

“Are you kidding me? I don’t wanna catch AIDS!”

Just a week ago, Billy would have responded with something witty enough to leave both Tommy and Carol speechless. Instead, he just winced and walked away as if he didn't see or hear them, but I know that he did. There was always that little blink-and-you’ll-miss-it flinch on his face whenever anything close to the word “faggot” was uttered.

It was stupid of me to think that English class would be any different. It should have been quieter, at least, but I couldn’t even hear myself think. The whispers sounded like the hissing of snakes to me, telling stories of Billy that I’d already heard. I thought my head was going to explode if I heard about him fucking three other men one more time. 

When I saw Billy at the door, I felt a little better, until I noticed that he wasn’t sitting in his usual seat. He would usually sit nearby and now he was going out of his way to sit as far away from me as possible, all the way into the back corner of the classroom. I even tried passing him a note, telling him how sorry I was and how much I missed him. He didn’t bother to read it. He just crumbled it up into a ball and tossed it in the trash. He didn’t even look at me.

 _He hates me._

“Morning,” I heard Mrs. Byers groaning amongst the constant whispering. No doubt, she was just as sick of it as Billy and I were. “Quiet down, everyone! I know it’s a hectic morning, but I’m not letting that stop the class. Now, would everyone open your books and turn to page…”

Mrs. Byers stopped as soon as she lifted the projector screen, revealing a chalk drawing that made me want to throw up. The drawing was of Billy, or what looked like a cartoon version of Billy. He was naked and on his hands and knees with what I think was supposed to be a drag queen fucking him in the ass. Next to the drawing in big block letters read: _BILLY HARGROVE TAKES IT UP THE ASS!_

The entire class was howling with laughter while Billy only sunk into his seat and held himself. 

“Who drew this?” Mrs. Byers roared like a lioness. Immediately, the laughter died down. “Well? If you all find it so funny, let’s see whose genius idea it was!” 

No one answered. I could hear crickets.

“Fine. If I’m not going to hear an answer, I’m going to assume that everyone in this room is behind this.”

I heard someone snickering: “Like someone was behind Hargrove.”

 _Snap!_ We all jumped in our seats. Mrs. Byers had slammed her meter stick onto her desk so hard that I wondered if it was going to shatter into a thousand splinters. There was a fire in her eyes that I had never seen in her before.

“Let me make myself bright and sparkling clear,” she growled. “I don’t care _who_ made this. I don’t care who drew it, I don’t care who came up with the idea, and I don’t care what its intention was. I do care, however, that what I thought was a class of seemingly sensible students would laugh at such a _disgusting_ image! I’ll be seeing _all_ of you in detention for the rest of the month and if I find out whoever was involved in this sick joke, I will make sure that they will neither see prom or graduation! Is that clear?”

The class responded with a sheepish “Yes, Mrs. Byers.”

“So I can hear you.”

“Yes, Mrs. Byers.”

“Good,” she said through gritted teeth and proceeded to erase the image before nearly tearing her book open. “Now, act five, scene one.”

I don’t think anyone left that class without a newfound fear of Mrs. Byers. She was usually so sweet. 

I’d like to say that the torment ended there. The end of the day was the cherry on top. 

Billy was still dragging his feet through the hallways, surrounded by the better part of the school, as he made his way to his locker. Names like “fruit,” “fairy,” “faggot,” “fudge-packer,” and all sorts of ugly things were scattered all over. Weeks ago, Billy would have taken one of his own pens and corrected any spelling or grammar error that he saw. That day, he simply stared at them with an expression as blank as a slate. I could hear the whispers around us rising and falling like a tide until they stopped all together and I knew that was the calm before the storm. Eventually, Billy turned the dial on his locker with a heavy hand. It seemed to take him forever to open the thing, as if he knew what was coming to him. 

Finally, his locker door swung open to make way for what looked like a waterfall of condoms; hundreds of them. I still remember the crowd howling with laughter around him as he stared at the pile that fell at his feet. 

_He’ll say something,_ I hoped against hope. _He’ll find something witty to say in response and walk away with my hand in his and everyone will know how stupid they look._

But he didn’t. He simply growled as he grabbed one of his textbooks before slamming his locker door shut and marching away. I wanted to follow him. I wanted to call out his name. I wanted to hold his hand. Instead, my feet felt as if they’d been planted into the ground and my voice was drowned out by the laughter echoing throughout the hallways. All I could do was watch him disappear into the crowd. 

At the corner of my eye, I could see Robin following him. 

It wasn’t until the end of the day that I found Billy in the English classroom, crouched down and crying, but he wasn’t alone. Mrs. Byers was sitting in front of him, looking on the verge of tears herself, telling him things that I couldn’t hear. Robin was sitting next to him, holding his hand in a way that I never did.

I would have stepped into the room, but I felt like it would only have made matters worse.

* * *

I wasn’t paying attention to anything that my parents had to say at dinner. Something about how badly I’d flunked that one test. Something else about how I’d never amount to anything. Something like that. It was like my failures—it never mattered which one—were their favourite topics. I wondered what they would have like to talk about more: the fact that I fell in love with another boy or the fact that I broke his heart. 

Not that it mattered. 

At the very least, they were in bed early that night, since they were flying to New York first thing the morning. What was so special about New York, anyway? They’d been there a hundred times already. It wasn’t like I needed someone—anyone—to tell me what to do.

Ted the bear was the only one I could turn to in the dead of night. I just wished he was able to talk. I wondered what he would have said.

 _You’re an asshole,_ I imagined him saying to me, even as I held him. _You were an always an asshole and you will always be an asshole. You’re stupid, you’re selfish, you’re shallow, and you have silly hair. Billy doesn’t deserve you._

He wasn’t wrong.

I didn’t sleep that night. How could I? It’s hard to sleep when there are too many thoughts screaming in your head. Still, I’m glad I was awake, otherwise I wouldn’t have heard someone knocking at our front door. I knew who it was the moment I heard it. There was only one person who would come to my door in the middle of the night.

“Hi, Billy,” I said weakly, as I opened the door for him. I just barely managed to smile. He didn’t smile back. He just stared coldly through the enormous shiner on his left eye. “C-can I get you something for that?” 

“No,” he answered immediately. “I just want to talk.”

As he walked in, I held my breath. Foolishly, my hopes kept telling me that he was here to finally hear me out, that he would forgive me for what I did, that we’d kiss and make up like in the romantic comedies that girls liked to watch. Fat chance! 

“I came here to say goodbye.”

My breath caught in my throat. “Goodbye?”

“Neil found out,” Billy explained. “You know what that means.”

I knew what that meant. Of course, I knew what that meant. I only wish I didn’t. “Military school.”

He nodded. “I’ll spare you the details of the fighting, the screaming, and the crying, but I _will_ tell you that Oscar’s out of the picture. Old man threw him right out the door and tried to shoot him down, but that little scamp is fast; ran away before he could even pull the trigger. After that, he looked through my room for any ‘faggot’ magazine or shit like that, but what he found was the stash of money I made through writing all those essays. Bastard took it all. On the bright side, Max has my back. So does Mrs. Byers, in fact, and Robin. Not gonna lie, that’s the interesting part about all this. ‘Cause you wanna know what’s funny? I’ve got my step-sister, my English teacher, and this chick I’ve known for maybe five minutes in my corner, while it was my fucking boyfriend who put me there in the first place!”

I wanted to argue that I had his back, but that would have been a lie. “Billy,” I managed to choke. “I’m so sorry.”

“You should be.” He hissed. “Because believe it or not, I can take a hit. I got thick skin. I can take assholes in school turning their backs on me, I can take the dirty looks I get in the hallways, I can take the gossip and the graffiti and the stupid pranks. Hell, I can even take Neil on a good day and I can even take my mom leaving me to put up with him. But what I _can’t_ take is the fact that the only person in my life that I _thought_ loved me with was just toying with me.”

“It wasn’t like that!”

“Oh?” his eyes went wide. “Then what _was_ it like? Because I’d really like to know what was so important to you that you would do something like that.”

I found myself with my hands in my pockets, looking down at my feet, searching for my words. “It was Tommy’s idea.”

Billy snorted.

“I’m serious! Tommy wanted to find out if you really were gay, like everyone was saying, so he convinced me to seduce you into finding out.”

I had never seen Billy look so disgusted. “That’s it?”

“W-well,” I stuttered. “Th-there was…there was a little more to it than that.”

“Spit it out, then. Go on, Harrington, I’m all ears!”

Harrington again. It wasn’t Steve anymore. Just Harrington.

“I was jealous,” I admitted. “It sounds stupid, but I was. I was angry that everyone was talking about you and not me. I used to be King Steve and then you came along and stole my crown. Now, I was just Steve. I wanted my crown back, so I agreed to Tommy’s stupid idea. I just didn’t think it would go this far.”

I was mentally and physically prepared for another slap in the face or a good tongue-lashing or something. Anything but the coldest laughter I would ever hear in my life. 

“You son of a bitch,” Billy chuckled coolly. “You stupid, selfish, shallow son of a bitch! You have been playing me this whole time, you made me think that you cared about me, and then you threw me to the wolves… _for popularity?!”_

“Billy, I’m sorry, I…”

“Well, I hope you’re happy now, Harrington! You got what you wanted.”

I did. “I didn’t…”

“Bullshit, yes you did! You got your crown back, so take it. I never wanted it in the first place, but it looks like you’re okay with it. That’s fine. You’ll have your fun with it. You’ll go to lame parties, drink stolen booze, smoke cheap cigarettes, and hang out with friends who don’t even care about you. Then you’ll go to prom in some nice suit that mommy and daddy bought, bring some pretty girl who doesn’t love you, and you’ll both be voted prom king and queen. But _then_ you’ll graduate. _Then_ you’ll have to look for whatever university will take you, but you’ll just end up in some community college because no one wants an average student who’s biggest accomplishment is winning a keg stand. Soon, you’ll meet some not-so-pretty girl whose just desperate enough for that frankly average-sized mushroom between your legs, you’ll fuck her for a little while before you decide that it’s only right to tie the knot, buy a big ugly house in the suburbs with a white picket fence, knock her up so she can fart out a few brats, and then they’ll all grow up to hate you both because they’re stuck in between a loveless marriage between a mommy and daddy who drink themselves to sleep and fuck other men behind each other’s backs _just to feel something._ I hope your little friends are _still_ calling you King Steve by then, Harrington, I really do.” 

Billy was now close enough for me to kiss him. I wasn’t sure whether I wanted to kiss him or kill him at that point. Still, against my own better judgement, I stepped closer. 

“And what about _you?”_

Billy snickered and stepped even closer, up for the challenge. “And what _about_ me?” 

“Are you going to spend the rest of your life in hiding?”

He sneered. _“Hiding!?”_

“I mean it, Billy. Are you really going to hide behind this front for the rest of your life? Because you might _play_ at being so cool with the leather jacket, the earring, and the mullet. You might _prove_ that you’re so cool by playing Metallica at full blast while you’re driving your Camaro. Hell, maybe you’ll even go just a little bit further when people start to see you for who you _really_ are by playing it off like it’s a joke. Honestly, it sound exhausting, but I know why you do it. Because you’re scared. I know you are. You’re scared of people finding out about the _real_ you. Not King Billy, but the Billy who hates his dad, misses his mom, loves his step-sister, and just so happens to be gay. I can’t say that I blame you after what you’ve been through, especially today, but you can’t keep up that act for the rest of your life. You can’t go through military school, or the army, or—fuck—whatever war is going to happen next and act like being such a tough guy is going to make you happy. You’ll kill yourself trying!”

With that, he pushed me with a sharp jab at my chest. I stumbled back, but immediately found my feet and lunged towards him. Without thinking, I grabbed him by the jacket, I pinned him against the wall and forced my mouth on his. I missed kissing him. It had only been days since I was even able to touch him, but God I missed kissing him! I didn’t even care that I was kissing him out of fear or anger. I just wanted to keep holding him as close as I could, keep licking into his mouth, keep drinking in every last drop of him. 

He only kissed me back for a few seconds before he pushed me off of him.

“I didn’t come here to be psycho-analyzed,” he said, wiping the kiss from his lips. “I didn’t come here to fucking kiss and make up either. I just wanted to tell you that these past few weeks meant something to me. They probably didn’t mean that much to you, but they did to me and—as stupid as it is—I really was falling for you. I hope the damage was worth it.”

 _They did mean something to me,_ I wanted to say. _You mean something to me._

“I leave in a week,” Billy continued and started to walk. “G’bye, Steve.”

“Billy, wait!

“Fuck you!” 

“You say your dad took _all_ of your money.” That stopped him. “Right?”

Billy turned and nodded. “Every last penny.”

That was when I bit my lip and rushed towards my parents’ legal file, which I knew was hidden in their bookshelf for safekeeping. It didn’t take me long to find my dad’s cheque book. With a shaking hand, I started scribbling down on the first page.

“What are you doing?” Billy asked.

Tearing out the cheque and handing it to him, I answered: “I’m paying you back. $10, 000. It won’t pay for your tuition, but it’ll be enough for you to get out from under Neil’s roof and find your own place without having to go to military school.”

“With your dad’s money?”

“He can make his own money back. Take it.” He looked at the thing as if it were covered in dog shit. “Take it!”

“I don’t want your pity!”

“I’m not doing this because I pity you, Billy, I’m doing this because I love you!”

Billy’s eyes went wide. I think I may have even caught the slightest glimpse of a smile in the corner of his lips, though that didn’t last. He stepped closer and took the cheque from my hand. I kept thinking that this was it. He was going to kiss me and all would be forgiven. But he didn’t.

He just ripped the cheque in half and said: “You’ve got a funny way of showing it.”

And with a slam of the door, he was gone. I let the tears fall from my eyes, not caring that my mom was watching. 

* * *

My parents didn’t say goodbye to me when they left. They rarely did before. I don’t think my mom could even bring herself to look at me for more than a second, let alone hug me, after what she had seen and heard the night before. Whether it had to do with the fact that I had kissed another boy or broke his heart, I wasn’t sure, but I knew that she was disappointed in me. I didn’t blame her.

The moment they were gone, I picked up the phone. Tommy answered within ten seconds. “Hello?”

“Hey,” I said dimly. “My folks are out. Wanna throw a party?”

I didn’t, but he did. We were able round up fifty or so people within an hour. Within two hours, we had enough booze to drown an alcoholic elephant. Within three hours, the collected records were blasting so loud I could feel the synthetic beats in the walls. By six o’clock, the place was full of strangers drinking themselves blind, smoking themselves numb, and jigging up and down like marionettes. It was strange to think that a few weeks ago, this would have cheered me up. Now it just felt like my house was haunted and I was surrounded by ghosts.

Maybe a drink would help me to enjoy myself. It usually did. A couple of chugs usually did the trick, but not tonight. After two or three beers, I opted for something stronger. The rum and coke felt a little better and the raspberry vodka was okay, but it was the shot of whiskey that did the trick. At least, by then, I was buzzed enough to dance. I was able to move my hips to Madonna and shake my head to Eurythmics, but for some reason, it was Kate Bush that almost brought me to tears. 

There were a few pretty girls distracting me, at least. One was blonde with blue eyes and wearing a leather jacket. I let her dance with me. I let her touch me. I let her kiss me. Before I knew it, I was dragged into a closet with her blood-red mouth all over me. Her lips tasted of paint-thinner from whatever she’d had to drink or whatever I’d had to drink even more and her tongue was swollen in the back of my throat. My own tongue was stiff and furred. I felt her painted fingernails raking into my scalp like talons, as her other hand grabbed one of mine and guided it under her shirt. Her wet kisses soon clumsily made their way down my neck, no doubt leaving behind traces of red.

I had to close my eyes to picture broad shoulders, hard hands, and dry lips.

“Oh, Billy!”

She stopped and backed away, looking at me as if I’d already come in my pants. “It’s Tammy.” And she was gone. 

I later found Tommy and Carol in the kitchen. They clearly inebriated—not half as much as I was—but still having a laugh. I almost envied them. Almost. 

“Hey, King Steve!” Tommy boomed. “Welcome back!”

_I didn’t go anywhere._

“Looks like someone got lucky,” Carol pointed to the lipstick stains on my face and neck. “Have fun back there?”

_I’m not having any fun at all._

Carol pouted. “Why the long face, sunshine?”

I looked back at the crowd of drunken strangers and watched them eat, drink, smoke, dance, and cackle like witches over a cauldron. “Bullshit,” I muttered. “It’s all bullshit.”

“What’s bullshit?”

“This,” I gestured to the party before me. “Who are these people, anyway? They’re not my friends, I hardly know any of them, so what the hell are they doing in my house?”

“Um, partying with King Steve?”

I had to laugh at that stupid nickname. Well, snort, more like, until I shouted at the top of my lungs: “King Steve. Fuck King Steve! Fuck him!”

Tommy winced, as if in disgust. “What the hell is your problem?”

Again, I had to laugh. “You’re asking me that _now?_ I’ve just spent the past few weeks of my life playing someone that I care about for this shit and you’re asking what my problem is _now?”_

“Steve,” Carol’s interjection was as shrill as an angry cat. “This is what you wanted.”

“No, it’s what _you_ wanted! _You_ guys wanted me to be King Steve again. _You_ wanted me to fuck with someone else’s life and _you_ wanted me to rat him out of the closet and for what? For some stupid party with a bunch of people we don't even know? For fifteen minutes of fame and a plastic crown on prom night? No, for _King Steve!_ _King fucking Steve!_ Where’s _King Steve_ gonna be after graduation, huh?”

I didn’t care that I was yelling at the top of my lungs or that people were staring, but if Tommy stepped any closer…

“Steve,” he said oh so sweetly. “Chill, man.”

I had to laugh. “Oh, _I_ need to chill! _I_ need to fucking chill! _I’m_ not the one who needs to cling onto the popular kids just to say that he’s worth two shits! Is that how you’re gonna suck up to your boss at your dead-end job twenty years from now, Tommy boy?”

Carol’s eyes were burning as she stepped in front of her precious boyfriend. “You leave him alone!”

“And _you,”_ I continued ranting, or rambling. I didn’t care. “Do you think the princess act is still gonna be cute when you’re in your thirties and growing fat and ugly while you’re barefoot and doing housework for an alcoholic husband and a dozen brats?”

That earned me a slap in the face. I don’t remember from whom and I’m not sure if I deserved it. Maybe I did. At the very least, it sobered me up just a little bit. Enough to give Tommy and Carol a barely audible: “Fuck you both.”

All I remember after that was staggering into the back lawn before blacking out. 


	8. A Friend in Need

I woke up with a steel poker in my head and a knot in my stomach. My body felt heavy and seemed to be sinking into a cold and moist surface that felt like thin, fine, little ribbons. When I opened my eyes it only took a moment to realize three things. One, I had passed out into the back yard. Two, the midday sun was so bright it seemed to sharpen the blade in my skull. Three, I was about to throw up. I didn’t have time to run inside and find a toilet or sink and I don’t even think my legs would have let me. All I could do was retch and choke for I don’t know how long.

When I was finally done, I looked up to see that the party was over. Everyone was gone, but they’d left the mess behind. They were probably just as sick of me as I was of them. I can’t say that I was too bothered by that. But one face looked familiar. 

In a small suburban town, it wasn’t too uncommon to see little critters scurrying about, so that little grey rat could have been any other rat if he didn’t look at me that way. Almost as if he was worried about me. Like I was a friend.

“Oscar?”

The rat, of course, said nothing. I just barely managed to get myself back on my feet, no matter how weak my legs were. Dragging myself into the kitchen, I took a moment to breathe before taking a jar of peanut butter from the cupboard, opened it at the door, and waited.

Oscar ran straight towards the jar and then huddled up to me. It felt like the first time anyone had held me in a long time. 

“Yeah,” I murmured. “I missed you, too.”

That’s when I heard the doorbell ringing. I hoped against hope that it was Billy coming to pick up Oscar, even though he couldn't possibly know that he was even here. Still, I forced myself back on my feet, placed Oscar down on the kitchen counter to enjoy his jar of peanut butter, and made my way to the door.

Robin, to my surprise, was smiling and holding a bag of what smelled like take-out. “Hey, dingus!” she chirped. “Thought you might need this.”

“Um, thanks? What is it?”

“Soul food, apparently: fried chicken, mac n’ cheese, and some cured veg.”

That sounded familiar. 

“Can I come in?”

I opened the door for Robin, who looked around the room with a long whistle. “Looks like a hurricane hit the place.”

“Party last night.”

“So I heard. Is that why you look like hell?”

I shrugged. “Yeah, I just got back.”

Robin smiled sadly and nodded as if she knew that already. She probably did. “Hungry?”

I was. I was starving, actually, though I wasn’t sure how much I would be able to keep down. Still, I led her to the kitchen. I didn’t expect her to smile when she saw a rat on the table. 

“Hey, little guy,” she cooed. “Friend of yours?”

“This is Oscar.”

Robin’s smile brightened, as she scratched Oscar behind the ears. “Oh, you’re Billy’s friend, aren’t you? What are you doing here, eh? Your daddy’s been missing you real bad, you know.”

I didn’t need to ask how she knew that Oscar was Billy’s.

Without saying a word, I grabbed us each a plate. Robin laid out all the food, which I had to admit smelled amazing. Before I could take a bite out of anything, Robin shoved a can of ginger ale in my face. “You’re gonna need this first,” she said. “Trust me.” She wasn’t wrong. I managed to down the ginger ale as much as I could without the bubbles making me sick. Soon, I felt the knot in my stomach loosen and it felt like I could breathe again. 

“Eat slowly,” Robin told me and I did. “I brought some more ginger ale, just in case.”

“You did or _he_ did?”

Robin said nothing. I continued to eat my way through the awkward silence between us. After enough fried chicken, mac n’ cheese, and cured veg, I soon felt more alive. I was beginning to see why Billy loved soul food so much. Robin, on the other hand, didn’t eat a thing. She just watched me as she held Oscar in her arms.

“Thanks for this,” I finally said.

“Oh, I’m not here for you. I’m only here because Billy can’t bear to look at you right now. Can’t say I blame him. I mean, look at you. Apart from what you did, you look like shit. Kinda smell like it, too.”

Just what I needed. Exactly what I deserved. 

“Why did you do it, Steve?”

What other answer could I give? “Because I’m a selfish prick.”

Robin smiled weakly. “I’ll give you ten points for honesty.”

“Do I get another ten if I tell him how sorry I am?”

“I dunno. He’s still pretty pissed at you.” 

“So why did he send you here with all of this food?”

“Because he still cares about you. He won’t admit it, but he does.”

“That’s bullshit and you know it. I broke his fucking heart, Rob! He should _hate_ me for what I did to him. I mean, wouldn’t you?”

“No.”

That took me aback. “No?”

“You still loved your ex after she dumped you, right?” She had me there. “Besides, people like us need to look out for each other.”

“People like _us?”_

Robin took a long, deep breath. “Steve, do you wanna know why I’m _really_ here?”

“Because Billy sent you?”

“Because I know what it’s like to be this angry with someone you love. I feel like I should hate my mom for trying to get me into more girly shit or my dad for trying to set me up with some random guy at school, but they’re still my parents. I know that they _think_ they’re doing what’s best for me, so I can’t hate them, but it still hurts and it doesn’t stop me.”

“From what?”

“Staring at Tammy.”

“I don’t… _oh!”_

Robin smiled sadly and nodded. “Yeah, _oh.”_

Tammy Thompson. Although my memory was still blurred by booze, I could still see her blonde hair, blue eyes, and paint-thinner kiss. I wanted to be sick again, but swallowed back the memory.

“Robin,” I had to say it. “I’m sorry.”

“I’m not the one you need to apologize to.”

“I know. I mean, that’s not what I meant. Tammy was at the party last night. She tried to make out with me. I mean, she did, but I was drunk. It didn’t go any further than that, I swear.”

Robin’s eyes darkened, but she nodded. “Figures. She always did like you.”

“I’m so sorry, Rob.”

I reached for her hand. She didn’t take it. 

“I already told you,” she said. “I’m not the one you need to apologize to.”

“I don’t know how many times I’m going to apologize to him before he leaves or, I dunno, before I grow old and die alone.” I sighed. “Whatever. He deserves better than me, anyway.”

“He deserved to win that scholarship, at least.”

My eyes lit up like the lightbulb floating above my head. “He did.”

Robin’s eyes were just as wide as mine. “What?”

“I mean, _technically_ , he did. That essay that won the competition; it wasn’t Tommy’s, it was Billy’s.”

Robin’s jaw dropped. “Tommy used Billy’s essay?” 

“Just like he’s used all his other essays.”

“Just like everyone else.”

“Exactly, but it was _Billy’s_ essay that won that competition, so…”

“…so that award belongs to Billy!”

 _Holy shit!_ Without a second thought, I grabbed what I could of the food, grabbed Oscar by the scruff of his neck, stuffed him into my backpack, and stormed towards my front door. I didn’t care how weak or sick I was. 

“Wait,” Robin called after me. “Where are you going?”

“School.”

“In _your_ state?”

“Yes.”

“Steve, there’s no way in hell you’re gonna drive there in one piece.”

“You drive me, then. I’m not gonna let my boyfriend drop out. You coming?”

Robin stood and thought a moment. It didn’t take long before she was following me. She insisted she drove, considering my state. I might have had to stop her a couple of times to throw up, but we were close until I recognized a house. 

“Stop right here!”

Robin did as she was told, probably thinking I had to throw up again, but as soon as she stopped the car I don’t think she was expecting to see me running off. 

“Wait!” she called. “Where are you going?”

“I’ll just be a minute!” I called back and ran straight to Billy’s house.

I don’t know how many knocks it took before the door was finally opened, but I knew who opened the door. The man who stood before me looked nothing like Billy. He had Billy’s eyes, of course, but they looked more like ice than the deep sea blue that I knew and loved. Just looking into them gave me a chill. 

“Hi,” I said meekly. “You must be Neil Hargrove.”

The man nodded. “Yeah, and you are?”

“Steve. You don’t know me, but I’m a friend of Billy’s. He left some homework here and asked me if I could pick it up for him. Can I come in?”

The man looked at me up and down, as if he were scanning me. I wondered if he could smell his own son on me like a bloodhound. Eventually, he opened the door and I sprinted past him as fast as I could. Just looking at him made me want to vomit. Again. 

Rushing through the small house, I found Billy’s room and remembered the last time I was there. I remembered where he kept all those essays. Shuffling through his desk, I managed to find a few. Of course, Billy kept copies! I nearly laughed in a state of victory until I heard a small cough behind me.

“Max!”

The redheaded tomboy was still in her PJs and eating a popsicle, looking me up and down just like her stepfather had just moments ago. 

“What are you doing here?” she asked.

“I could ask you the same thing.”

“I’m sick. What’s your excuse? Trying to get back in my big bother’s pants?”

I hushed her sharply, knowing exactly what Neil would do if he heard that. “Keep your voice down, will you? I’m doing him a favour.”

“You know he won’t forgive you, right?”

I sighed. Why wasn’t I surprised that Billy would tell Max about what I did? “I know that, but I have to set things right.”

Max looked to me, then to the pile of essays in my hand, and then back to me. With one thoughtful lick of her popsicle, she cocked her head to her left. “Fine, but before you do…” She came towards me in two strides, looked down, and…

“Ow!”

“That’s for Billy,” she said, as I rubbed the newfound bruise on my shin. “No one hurts my big bother but me. Now get out!”

I did as she was told, though not without a limp. Damn, that girl had one hell of a kick in her! Something told me Billy taught her that.

* * *

When we finally made it to school, I ran to the principal’s office in spite of myself. I struggled to pick up any essay that flew out of my hands, but I managed, refusing to let any of them fly. Principal Hopper was in the middle of a conversation with Mrs. Byers when I burst into the office and slammed the pile of essays onto his desk

“Billy Hargrove won the essay competition!”

Both the principal and the teacher looked at me as if I’d just told them that I ate children for breakfast. “What?”

“Tommy Hagan cheated on the essay competition,” I panted. “He’s been cheating since day one, so has everyone else. Well, maybe not _everyone_ else, but everyone else who’s been paying Billy $50 an essay. Your school is full of cheats and I have the copies to prove it. Look. _The Rise and Fall of Lucifer_ by Billy Hargrove, not Thomas Hill; _The Destruction of Dollanganger_ by Billy Hargrove, not David Sutherland; _Alex and Evolution_ by Billy Hargrove, not Michael Patrick; _Humbert, Humbug, Pervert_ by Billy Hargrove, not Marko Winters; _Made of Stone_ by Billy Hargrove, not Paul McCarter; _Breath of Fresh Eyre_ by Billy Hargrove, not Dwayne Wirth; and here’s my favourite: _Heathcliff the Fallen_ by Billy Hargrove, _definitely_ not Thomas Hagan!” 

“Okay,” Mrs. Byers rested her hands on my shoulders. “Calm down, Steve. Breathe.”

I did as she told. Deep, slow, yoga breaths. In. Out. 

“Good. Now, can you tell us the whole story, slowly, this time?”

I took one more deep breath and nodded. I started with Billy trying to tutor Tommy in English, only to do his homework for him in exchange for money. I continued the story with how many other people had paid him to do the same. I probably shouldn’t have gotten why he kept doing it, why he was saving up so much, or even why it was such a well-known secret, but the truth has a way of spilling out. 

When my story was over, Principal Hopper sighed heavily and lit up a cigarette. He looked in dire need of a stiff drink. “Harrington,” he said. “Wait outside and for God’s sake, drink some water.”

I nodded and did what I was told. For the next half hour, I could hear Hopper and Byers arguing. I heard names like Hargrove and Hagan perhaps a hundred times. At one point, I heard the words “plagiarism” and “expulsion.” Finally, I heard Hopper’s voice booming throughout the room: “William Hargrove, please report to the principal’s office.”

 _Shit!_ I thought. _Am I doing the right thing?_

Billy’s eyes were burning when he came through the door. “What are _you_ doing here?”

Before I could answer, Principal Hopper opened his office door with a grimace on his face. “Mr. Hargrove,” he said. “Come in.”

Billy did as he was told, but not without a cold glance at my direction. Hopper didn’t quite close the door behind him. There were three inches between the door and the wall, just enough for me to peek through. 

Once in the office, Billy slumped into a chair before Hopper’s desk. He looked so stiff.

“I don’t suppose you know why I called you in here,” Hopper said. Billy only shrugged. “Mr. Hargrove, can you tell me what plagiarism is?”

Billy nodded. “It’s when you steal someone’s work for your own gain.”

“Correct. Now, can you explain to me why I’ve just received a report involving you as the subject to plagiarism?”

“I’m not sure I understand, sir.”

“Mr. Hargrove, are these your essays?”

Billy stared at the pile of essays and nodded. “Yes, sir.”

“Have you been charging students to plagiarize your work?”

Billy looked like he wanted to kill me. I could see his jaw clenching and his fists tightening around the arms of his chair. Both Hopper and Byers looked as if they were trying to push an answer out of him, but with no avail. Billy gave no answer.

“I understand,” Hopper continued. “That you’re transferring to another school, so I don’t see any point in expelling you, but a little birdie tells me that you wrote the award-winning essay…”

“I did!” Billy blurted out, silencing the principal. “I did write that essay.”

Principal Hopper swallowed. “Is there any reason why I should believe you?”

“Because I may be some white trash faggot, sir, but I’m smart. I’m _really_ smart. I’ve read all of the works by the Brontë sisters by the time I was fourteen, including _The Tenant of Wildfell Hall_ , which I personally find to be an underrated piece of literature detailing the ramifications of domestic abuse, I can quote _Jane Eyre_ backwards, and I can analyze _Wuthering Heights_ better than Tommy Hill could ever dream to. I’m really good at analyzing, by the way, and debating. I can debate you to the ground on why certain books like _A Clockwork Orange, Lolita, To Kill A Mockingbird,_ and _Flowers in the Attic_ should never have been banned from our school libraries in the first place. I’m also well-versed in philosophical, religious, and cultural studies, and I’m fluent in Spanish.”

I could have punched the air, I loved him so much!

“I’m really smart, sir. I’m just really unlucky. I don’t have much support, so sometimes I do the wrong thing and I realize that charging other students to plagiarize my work was wrong, but if you give me a second change I will not waste it.”

Principal Hopper was biting the inside of his cheek and tapping his pen on the desk, thinking hard, but I could see Mrs. Byers trying her best to hold back the biggest smile I would ever see on her face. 

“Thank you, Billy,” the principal finally said. “We’ll need some time to consider your position. Until then, I’ll need a few names.”

Billy gave Hopper a list of several names. Some of them, I recognized. Others, I did not. Before long, I heard those names booming throughout the school and later saw the faces to those names lead into the principal’s office. Tommy looked like he was ready to punch me in the face. I didn’t care if he did. The entire group was soon behind the closed door that Billy had left.

He looked at me as if he would rather gargle molten lead than be near me, but he slumped by my side nonetheless. He was silent for what felt like a full hour. I wanted to say something. Anything. _I’m sorry. I love you. I’m so fucking sorry!_ “Billy, I…”

“I’m not gonna lie,” he finally growled. “I don’t know what the hell I’m doing here, but I’m torn between wringing your neck and taking you outside and throwing you onto a busy road.”

I shrugged. “That’s fair.”

“I mean, it’s one thing to out me as a faggot, but it’s a hell of another to out me as some kinda dealer. You gonna tell everyone I’m a Kate Bush fan, too?”

“Are you?”

He growled and I made a mental note never to joke when he was angry. “Seriously, Harrington, why am I here?”

“Because you deserve that scholarship.”

“I already told you: I don’t _want_ your pity.”

“What makes you think I’m doing this out of pity? That was _your_ essay, Billy, and you know it. You said so yourself: Hill stole your prize. This is me taking it back for you. I know it’s not going to take back what I did and I know that it’s not going to get you to forgive me and, frankly, I don’t care if you never do. I just care that you get what’s rightfully yours.”

Finally, he looked me in the eye.

“What I did sucked,” I admitted. “It _really_ sucked, but I can’t take it back. What I can do, at the very least, is give you what you deserve and you deserve that scholarship more than anyone. If you can’t accept that, tough shit.”

Billy was silent for another few minutes before he managed to mutter a quiet: “Thanks.” Awkward silence again. It was better than arguing with him, at least. His face had softened and for a moment I couldn’t believe that I’d forgotten just how beautiful he was when he wasn’t so angry all the time. _Smile,_ I wanted to tell him. _Please smile for me._

“Do you _actually_ listen to Kate Bush?”

His cheeks went red. “My mom did.”

“And you do too?”

“Sometimes.”

That had to be a yes. I could only guess what his favourite was. _“Out on the wily, windy moors we’d roll and fall in green,”_ I sang in perhaps the worst attempt at such a high-pitched voice. _“You had a temper like my jealousy. Too hot, too greedy. How could you leave me_ —damn, that’s high!”

At least it made him smile. God, I missed that smile! 

“C’mon,” I urged. “You probably know it better than I do. _How could you leave me…?”_

_“…when I needed to possess you? I hated you. I loved you, too.”_

We were both laughing now. It felt good. Even if he hated me just as much as I loved him, it felt good to be laughing with him again. I didn’t even care if this was the last time I would ever hear him laughing again. 

Then we heard squeaking. Oscar’s tiny head was peeking from my backpack. Billy’s eyes lit up. “Oh,” I said. “I almost forgot, I believe this little rascal is yours.”

“Oscar!” Oscar hopped straight out of my backpack and scurried into Billy’s arm, covering his best friend’s cheek with kisses. “Hey, buddy! Where’ve you been? I missed you!” 

“I found him in my back lawn this morning. Or, rather he found me. I guess he remembered from…” I couldn’t bring myself to say it.

For a moment—just a moment—he looked grateful. If he hadn’t dumped me like a pile of garbage, I like to think that he would have kissed me, but maybe I only thought that because I wanted so badly to kiss him. I almost did. I only leaned in an inch before we heard the door open. 

Mrs. Byers stood before us with a sad smile on her face and her hands behind her back. Billy seemed to make an attempt at hiding Oscar in his jacket, but she insisted there was no need. Behind her, every face that was named stared daggers at us through the half-open door. Tommy, in particular, looked just about ready to punch Billy. _Let him try._

“We’ve discussed everything,” Mrs. Byers said to Billy. “It didn’t take as much interrogation as we thought, but at the moment we’re waiting for everyone to be picked up. Meanwhile, I believe this is yours.”

From behind her, Mrs. Byers held out what looked like a book made of brass resting on a black box with a plaque that read: _Hawkins 1985 Annual Essay Competition._ _Winner: Thomas Hagan._

“We’re working on what can be done about the scholarship,” she continued. “We’re hoping it’ll reach you within the next day or two, but it might take some time before we do something about the winner’s name.”

Nearly jumping in my seat, I rummaged through my backpack until I found a permanent marker. I took the trophy in my own hands and scratched out Tommy’s name. When I was finished, Mrs. Byers laughed to see that it now read: _Hawkins 1985 Annual Essay Competition._ Winner: ~~_Thomas Hagan_~~ _Billy Hargrove._

Mrs. Byers was beaming now. “I bet your parents will be real proud of you when they hear about this.”

Billy shrugged. “I don’t know about that.”

“Well, _I’m_ proud of you.”

Finally, _something_ was able to make him smile.

* * *

“I tell ya,” Billy said, as we left, still smiling and still staring at that trophy. I couldn’t stop smiling either. “I never thought I’d be holding one of these."

“Just wait until you’re holding that scholarship.”

“God, can you imagine the look on Neil’s ugly face when he sees me with a trophy _and_ a fucking scholarship?”

I couldn’t. Any time I so much as thought of that bastard’s face, all I wanted to do was punch him in the face. 

“How did you get your hands on all those essays, by the way?” he asked.

“I kinda paid a visit to your place and told your old man I was picking up some homework for you. Maybe that sounds shitty of me, but before you kick me for it, just know that Max already did the job for you.”

Billy laughed heartily. “That’s my little blister.”

We laughed a moment until ours smiles were fading. Billy seemed to shake his head of it and cleared his throat. Soon, that steely gaze was back on me again. “I’m still mad at you, y’know.”

I nodded. “I know, but I don’t care.”

Billy frowned.

“Billy, you have every right in the world to be mad at me, but I’ve said it before: I don’t care if you never forgive me. Honestly, that’s no less than what I deserve.”

“So why’d you do this?”

 _Tell him the truth. For real, this time._ “Because it was the right thing to do and because I meant what I said that night you came over to my place: I love you.”

He looked as if those three little words had punched him in the gut. 

“I’ll always love you, Billy, even if you never love me back.”

And that was it. That was goodbye. I thought it was, anyway, so I kept walking until I heard his voice.

“I do,” he said. “I do love you, Steve, I just don’t like you right now.”


	9. Prom Night

For the rest of the week, Billy and I became no more or less than classmates. I kept waiting and waiting and waiting for a note to be passed or a glance to be shared. I got nothing. Not even a wink. I can’t say that I was all that surprised. Disappointed, sure, but definitely not surprised. To be honest, it wasn’t because I expected him to take me back, though God knows I wanted him to. I just wanted to say goodbye.

Then the day came. I was just about to open my locker when I saw him emptying his own. He had a backpack and a garbage can with him, packing the backpack with all of his books and cassettes and the garbage bag with any cruel note or packed condom that was shoved into his locker. I held my breath when he stopped at one book, the copy of _Maurice_ that I’d given him. It looked well-thumbed by now, almost to the point of falling apart, and I had to wonder how many times he’d read it for someone who claimed to hate Forster. Billy smiled a little at the book in his hand and laughed when he opened the first page to see the message I’d written. It was strange to think how long ago that felt and how far we’d come from there, until it all went down to shit. I don’t think he saw me watching because he didn’t put the book in his backpack or the garbage bag, like I expected.

He stuffed it into his jacket.

I saw Robin walking towards him. He greeted her with a smile. She returned that smile, the way any friend would, but even from afar I could see the tears welling up in her eyes. They talked for a while. I didn’t hear much or even read much on their lips, but at some point she nodded and they held each other. I heard a sob escape Robin’s lips when Billy rubbed her back and kissed her temple. When they parted, I saw Robin wipe a tear from Billy’s cheek. If I didn’t know any better, I’d have thought they were in love. But I did know better.

They parted ways and said their goodbyes. Billy was all packed and ready to go. I didn’t expect him to stop by my side.

“So,” he said. “I guess this is it.”

“Yeah. I’ll miss you.”

He nodded. I wasn’t expecting an _I’ll miss you, too_ or even a simple _goodbye_. I wasn’t expecting him to touch me either, but there was his hand gently resting on my shoulder. It was only for a moment, but just feeling his touch for one last time was enough. I could still feel the warmth of his touch as he walked away.

He continued on his way out and then he was gone.

* * *

The weeks after dragged in a snail’s pace and yet, somehow, prom night was approaching faster than ever. Every day I saw at least three couples announcing their prom date as if it was their wedding night. I had to laugh when I thought of how many times I’d hoped to take a pretty girl to prom. At some point in my life, I thought that pretty girl would have been Nancy Wheeler. She, of course, would be going with Jonathan Byers instead. It was funny to think that mere months ago, this fact would have turned me green with envy. Instead, I held onto this fantasy surrounding Billy Hargrove.

To say I missed him would have been an understatement. I kept dreaming about him. Good dreams and bad dreams. Fantasies were something of a sanctuary for me. I would imagine him knocking on my window after escaping military school and asking me to run away with him or barging in on a class in full military gear and picking me up bridal style to take me away. I know how stupid those fantasies were and I knew how stupid they were back then, but it was better than watching the days pass by the way they did.

On the Friday before prom night, Robin and I skipped our next class to smoke under the bleachers. I told her that I desperately needed a cigarette, but I think she knew that I just couldn’t sit through English. It was hard to listen to the words of Shakespeare and not hear Billy’s voice.

“D’you think he’ll be okay?”

“It’s Billy,” Robin said with a smile. “You know what he’s made of.”

I smiled back and nodded, remembering the last time I saw him. “What did he ask you?”

“What do you mean?”

“Just before he left, I saw you guys talking. He looked like he’d asked you something and you nodded. What did he ask you?”

“Just if I’d be okay.” Robin was a terrible liar.

 _“Are_ you okay?”

She shrugged. She was okay. “You?”

“What do you think?”

Robin’s smile weakened, as she shuffled closer to my side and took my hand in hers. She leaned over to me in comfort. I couldn’t help but wonder if she needed the comfort, too, when she rested her head on my shoulder. I could see other people watching us and giggling, probably wondering what the hell King Steve was doing with someone like Robin.

“Prom’s coming up,” I blurted out.

“Yeah, I heard you were running for prom king. So what?”

“Do you wanna go with me?” Robin raised an eyebrow and took another drag from her cigarette. In all fairness, it was far from the most romantic prom proposal, but then Robin was a roaring lesbian and I was…something. “As friends, I mean, not as a date.”

“Friends,” Robin scoffed.

“Robin, you _are_ my friend.”

“I know I am.”

“So, do you want to go to prom with me?”

“I would,” she said with a laugh. “But I’m not exactly prom queen material. Besides, somebody already asked me.”

My eyes widened. “Who?”

“It’s a secret.”

“Rob, I already know you like to pluck the lady harp, so spill! Who’s the lucky lady? _Please_ don’t tell me it’s Tammy Thompson, you can do so much better!”

Robin laughed again. “It’s not Tammy.”

“Oh, thank God! Who is it, then?”

“I’m not telling.”

“C’mon, please? Pretty please?”

“No!” Robin snuffed out her cigarette and stood up. “Besides, I could eat a whole pig right now. Wanna grab some lunch?”

I shook my head and said I wasn’t hungry. Truth be told, I was starving, I just didn’t want to eat any of the cafeteria slop. I think Robin could tell because she simple nodded and left me alone.

Hugging my knees to my chest, I watched as Robin made her way back into school. She passed by a group of girls who were snickering at her ripped jeans. I didn’t hear what they were saying to her, or at her, but Robin just walked on by. One of the girls was a small brunette with big brown eyes that followed Robin until she was gone.

I recognized something in her.

For the rest of the day, I saw that girl in the hallways, in Spanish class, in the hallways again, and in History class. Every now and then, I would catch her looking at Robin. I’d see the way she’d bite her glossed lip and play with the curls in her hair until a teacher told her: “Holloway, pay attention!” Then she’d straighten her back and pretend to get back to work until she was staring at Robin again.

I found her at her locker at the end of the day, held my breath, and walked towards her.

“Hi there,” I chirped. “Holloway, is it?”

Holloway looked me up and down, clearly unimpressed. “Heather,” she said. “King Steve, right?”

I shook off that stupid nickname. “Right. Look, I was wondering if I could ask you something.”

* * *

I didn’t recognize myself when I put on my suit. I was black and white from head to toe like a hero from an old movie, save for the blue, pink, and purple carnation pinned to my jacket, which I chose to wear with pride. My mother pretended to wipe away a tear when she saw me in my suit while my dad joked about how much I looked like a “faggot” with that big-ass flower on my jacket. It only stung me for a moment until I thought of how many times Billy must have felt that word. Not heard. Felt. I guess I deserve it too. My mother flinched at the word, though.

On my way out, I felt her hand on my shoulder, stopping me in my tracks. “We love you,” she said. “You do know that, don’t you?”

I nodded because I knew she meant it then just as I do now. She held me so close before I left.

I picked Heather up at six. Her mom smelled of wine and was slurring her words when she told us how cute we were together, to which Heather rolled her eyes. Her dad just made me promise to have her home by midnight and looked like he’d crush me in some way if I didn’t. Heather looked pretty, though, and she seemed lighter on her feet once she was in my car and out of her parents’ way. She didn’t even seem to mind that the sunflower and forget-me-not corsage didn’t quite match her rose pink dress. In fact, she was more amused by the carnation on my suit. “What’s _that_ ugly thing for?”

“I lost a bet.”

Hawkins High’s 1985 prom night was not as glamorous as it would have liked to be. The gymnasium was decorated with gold and silver streamers with cardboard moons and stars of the same painted metallics. The band was off key, save for the singer, whose voice sounded almost like a child’s. Even the colours on the girls’ prom dresses looked faded, as they swirled around the room with their partners.

I looked to my date, who smiled when I offered her a glass of punch. I couldn’t believe my eyes when I turned to the buffet table. Robin wore a dress the colour of wine and in the right light, I could see the pastel pink tips on her now crimped hair, which almost matched the cherry blossoms on her corsage. She was barely recognizable in pretty pink, but that wasn’t what made my heart skip a beat.

“Hey,” Heather pointed to Robin’s date. “Isn’t that Billy Hargrove?”

It was. There he was, in plain sight, but he didn’t look like Billy at all. Gone were the ripped jeans, old band t-shirts and—to my surprise—the mullet to end all mullets. His blond curls were now cut short and had on a black suit not too dissimilar to mine, but pinned to his jacket was a little rainbow rose. It took all my strength to keep from hugging him when he bowed his head at me, raising a glass of punch in my direction.

“I thought he was shipped off to military school.”

“So did I,” I said, wondering what the hell Billy was doing here until he wrapped an arm around Robin’s waist. At the corner of my eye, I could see Heather’s smile fading. “You like her, don’t you?”

Her cheeks were now an even brighter pink than her own dress. “Oh, uh…”

“It’s okay, Heather.”

She looked at me with wide eyes, then to Robin, and then back to me. “It’s just…she’s so cool and she doesn’t even know it.”

“Cooler than your friends?”

“They’re not _really_ my friends. My mom just made me hang out with them so she’d have other moms to hang out with.”

I bit my lip. “Why don’t you ask her for a dance?”

She didn’t answer.

Heather shared a few dances with me—which her “friends” couldn’t stop ogling at—and a few more with other people. A few times, I saw her getting so close to Robin that I thought she was going to do it. _Ask her!_ I kept thinking. _Ask her!_ But she never did. She just went back to the punch bowl and watched her from afar. I couldn’t entirely blame her. I was no different when I watched Billy dancing with Robin.

Then prom king and queen were announced. I could feel the room begin to tighten when the sound of feedback filled the room. “Ladies and gentleman,” announced a far less than enthused and suited Principal Hopper. “It is my pleasure to announce that the year is almost over and that we have our votes for prom king and queen.”

As Mrs. Byers held a cushion with a plastic crown and tiara, every boy and girl in the room tensed when they heard the opening of the envelope.

“Hawkins’ 1985 prom king and queen are Steve Harrington and Carol Perkins!”

I could hear Carol squealing from the other side of the room. She looked like she was in tears when I saw her donning a little black dress with diamonds and pearls like a red-haired Audrey Hepburn. She made a beeline for the stage, grabbed my hand, and dragged me to the stage.

“Can you believe it?” she gasped, her voice broken from joyous tears. “We did it!”

 _Did what?_ I almost asked, but she continued to drag me to centre stage like I was a rag doll. We were given our sashes and crowns and she received a bouquet of roses half her own size. She wore her tiara and her tears with pride, thanking the applauding crowd like an actress winning an Oscar.

“Thank you!” she sobbed into the microphone and rambled on and on about how many times she’d dreamed of this moment. I was surprised she didn’t end her long-winded speech with a tear-filled: “You like me! You really like me!”

Then it was my turn. The microphone was shoved into my hand and all I could say was a dumbfounded: “Um….” My mind went blank. I should have been thanking something or someone, right? But for what? For fifteen minutes of fame and a plastic crown?

When I looked to the crowd, Billy’s was the only face I could see clearly, shaking his head with that knowing grimace.

“Fuck this!”

Dropping the mic, I took the crown from my head and snatched the tiara from Carol’s, in spite of her protests. “It’s only plastic, Carol.” She could only stare agape, as I walked off the stage.

As I made my way through the gym, the crowd parted like the seas to make a path that lead to Billy. He stood sternly and stared at me with a softer gaze than I was expecting. Placing the crown on his head and the tiara on mine, I extended my hand and asked him: “Dance?” The slightest glimpse of a smile on the corner of his lips until he began to laugh. He took my hand.

For a moment, the room seemed to almost empty itself to make room for us. Some people gasped, others giggled, and some winced. Nonetheless, the music eventually began to play, as if it had no other choice. Billy was stiff and looking left and right like he was expecting someone or something to spring to attack. I only hand to place my hand on his cheek to calm him down.

“It’s okay, Billy,” I assured him. “It’s okay.”

But he was still shaking and twitched when he heard Tommy coughing: “Faggots.”

At the corner of my eye, I could see a pink blur passing us by. Billy noticed too. Heather. She swiftly marched har way towards Robin and offered her hand. Robin was almost as red as her dress, but took Heather’s hand and followed her to the dance floor, swaying slowly in her arms, as she waved at us with a shy smile. Soon, Jonathan Byers was dancing with Ashe Berry, Nancy Wheeler was dancing with Barbara Holland, Chase Reed was dancing with Eric Burgess, Tammy Thompson was dancing with Kali Prasad, David Sutherland was dancing with Michael Patrick, Carrie King was dancing with Laurie Curtis, Paul McCarter was dancing with Marko Winters, girls were dancing with girls and boys were dancing with boys.

Tommy and Carol stood alone.

The room looked like a rainbow and we just kept dancing.

* * *

Billy and I spent the rest of the evening dancing before we could have our picture taken. Heather and Robin did the same before they ran off to wherever, both wearing the biggest smiles I’d seen on either of them all night. Soon, prom was over and neither of us wanted the night to end. There was just too much to say. So we drove to the quarry. We sat on the hood of Billy’s car, eating soul food and drinking beer while watching the stars until dawn was breaking. Oscar sat between us, wearing a tiny rainbow bowtie with pride. We still wore our crowns, like we were kings of the quarry.

“I can’t believe you did that,” Billy cackled on his next hit. “Did you see the look on Carol’s face when you took her tiara?”

“How could I forget?” I chuckled. “I was actually tempted to break the thing into little pieces just to see how else she’d react.”

“She’d probably have fainted. I’m glad you didn’t, though. Looks better on you.”

I straightened my back and tapped my tiara with a queen’s wave. “That crown’s a good look on you, too. Shame about the mullet.”

“Alas, fair mullet,” Billy raised his beer bottle to pour a drop into the ground. “I knew thee well.”

“Rest in peace, Billy’s mullet.”

We clinked our bottles in sad praise of that poor mullet. As we drank to its memory, I had to say it: “I missed you.”

“I missed you, too…pretty boy.”

My cheeks were suddenly warm and I was grateful it was still dark enough to hide the redness in my cheeks. I never thought I’d miss that stupid nickname.

“By the way,” Billy continued. “Nice flower.”

I laughed at the multicoloured monstrosity on my suit. “Thanks. It’s not exactly a rainbow suit, but it’s something. I guess you beat me to the rainbow, though, huh?”

“What can I say?” Billy said, flaunting his rainbow rose like a peacock flaunting its feathers. “The rainbow appears on a dismal grey day and, like most things of beauty, I’m here and I’m gay!”

As we laughed over more drinks and munchies, I couldn’t stop staring at the guy next to me. I hardly recognized him, save for the smile on his face. “What are you doing here, Billy?”

“At the moment,” Billy said, lighting up a cigarette. “Drinking with the prom king while my lesbian girlfriend galavants with some other pussy puncher.”

I rolled my eyes. “You know what I mean. Shouldn’t you be crawling under barbed wire or something?”

“Nah,” he took a drag and stared into the sky. “I got expelled.”

“For what?”

“Well, It turns out there are a lot of queers in military school, so I got caught in the middle of a gang bang with a few bunkmates.”

“Billy, c’mon.”

Billy sighed out the smoke before passing me the cigarette. “I pulled the fire alarm.”

I coughed on my next hit. _“What?”_

“You heard me. They gave me a good talking to about it, but fuck if I remember half of what they said. I was just happy to get out of there. After I was kicked out, my old man decided he’d had enough of me, so he kicked me out, too. Oscar and I have been hiding out at the motel ever since.”

“Why?”

Billy didn’t answer. He just stared at me for the longest time before hopping off of the car, standing before me with both hands on my cheeks, and kissing me. “That answer your question?”

“You mean…?”

He kissed me again, deeper this time. This time, I kissed him back, holding him so close I thought I was going to crush him. This had to be a dream. Any moment now, I’d wake up. Then he stopped. _No, don’t,_ I almost said. _I don’t want to wake up._ But he was still there, smiling at me, when I opened my eyes.

“I thought about what you said that night,” Billy finally said. “About how I spend my life in hiding. You were right.”

“I was?”

“Yeah, as much as I hate to admit it, even to myself. I always felt like it was just _safer_ to hide, know what I mean? Like, when you’re watching a scary movie and then the scariest part comes up, you close your eyes until it’s over and just laugh it off like it didn’t scare the shit out of you, right? Well, that’s what it’s always been like for me. If I just shut everything out: Neil, my mom, being gay, _everything_. If I just close my eyes to it all and laugh it off, then I feel safer. That’s how it’s been for a long time.”

For a moment, I remembered that night at the party when we played seven minutes in heaven. He looked just as exhausted then as he did now. “So why’d you come back?”

“What do you think? I wasn’t lying about there being a lot of queers in the military; mostly, gay or lesbian teens whose parents didn’t know what to do with them or didn’t want to. I saw them doing the same thing I was doing, but worse. They looked like they were dead inside. Sometimes _I_ felt dead inside. That’s when I thought about you. Steve, everything we had: at the fair, at my house, and at yours…that was all real. It was to me, anyway. I felt like I could actually be myself around you and that’s what got me thinking: that kinda shit doesn’t happen every day, does it? It sure as hell doesn’t happen to someone like _me_ everyday, so I thought: fuck it. You were right: I _am_ scared, but I don’t want to close my eyes anymore. I want to keep them open.”

I couldn’t stop smiling, as I tucked a blond curl behind his ear and kissed him. I might have broken a nose or a tooth, crashing into him so hard and still he was smiling when it was done.

“For the record,” I said, resting my forehead against his. “It was just as real to me as it was for you. You probably don’t believe me, but…”

“I know,” he said softly. “You only had to tell me once.”

“I mean it, Billy. I know that what I did was stupid, but I actually was falling in love with you and I’m still in love with you, but I want you to know that you don’t owe me anything or…”

“Steve,” he chuckled and kissed me again. “Shut up.”

“So…we’re good?”

His only answer was one last kiss that lasted the best part of the night.


	10. Epilogue: The Year Book

As I remember all of this, I’m looking at our prom picture in our yearbook. Hawkins seemed to laugh it off as a couple of dudes goofing off on prom night, but it doesn’t take a genius to analyze it. I’m holding Billy, for a start, and kissing him on the cheek while he smiles so brightly. His smile hasn’t aged quite as much as he has and he still makes his smart-ass jokes. They got smarter since he was accepted into New York University and even smarter since he graduated. They got darker when Oscar had to be put to sleep and brighter when Max graduated from high school. Above all, they were especially filthy we moved in together. Thirty years and they still make me laugh.

I turn the page to see Robin and Heather’s prom picture smiling at me. It’s strangely more common to see two girls holding each other in the way that they do and immediately assume they’re just good friends, but I look at the way Heather stares at Robin like she’s made of stardust and I know. I smile back when I think of how far they’d gone since then. I’d like to say that both attended Juilliard and that Robin grew to become a famous rockstar and Heather an award-winning actress and lived happily ever after, but I think I’d be a dead man if I did. Robin studied music theory in Manhattan and became a teacher. Heather studied the dramatic arts in Broadway and also became a teacher. They did live happily ever after, though, in a tiny Queens apartment with a cat named Oscar.

Turning another page, I find Tommy and Carol’s picture. I could describe a certainfeeling of schadenfreude when I look at their forced smiles, but I can’t help but feel sad when I look at them now and think about the last time I heard about either of them. Word is that they had a nasty breakup after prom night. Carol married another man barely a year after graduation and last I heard she was in rehab. Turns out I was only half-right about the alcoholic husband and a dozen brats. I don’t know what happened to Tommy other than coming out as gay in 1995. Neither of them ever left Hawkins.

I close the yearbook with a sigh and turn to see Billy buttoning up. I’ve grown used to seeing him in a suit, especially on nights like this, but sometimes he looks more like the boy he used to be in jeans and a band t-shirt. The mullet, thankfully, never returned. He notices me staring at him. Years ago, I think he would have shrugged this off or teased me about it. He still teases me, sometimes, but it’s always with that Cheshire Cat grin that I’ve never gotten tired of. “What’re you starin’ at, pretty boy?”

“Nothing, just thinking about when we met.”

“You’re always thinking about when we met this time o’ year.”

It’s true. I always so think about it on our anniversary and I always remind him that there’s a lot to be grateful for since then. It’s only in the past few years that we’ve been able to hold hands in public without being stared at, which is why I’m hiding the ring in my pocket.

“I can’t help it,” I continue. “I keep thinking about all that’s happened and how cool you were back then.”

He takes false offence to that and finishes his outfit off with one of his mother’s earrings in his still pierced ear, a reminder of where he came from. As he marches towards me in two strides and pulls me in for a kiss, I’m reminded by that wicked smile of our youth. “Bitch,” he says. “I’m still cool.”

He is. I can’t deny it. “You’re _so_ cool.”


End file.
